Familiar
by Piccylo
Summary: Not every wizard needs a familiar, but they certainly are helpful, especially to academy students downtrodden with tests, papers, and projects. A strange, black cat with a white hourglass mark on his chest and a cynical attitude becomes one of them.
1. Appearance

Disclaimer: Dragonlance belongs to… Jesus Christ, I don't know. It's hard to keep track of. But it's not me, to be certain. Raistlin, however, I believe is more strictly the property of Margaret Weis and/or Tracy Hickman. The other characters and the general world in this _basically_ belong to me. This thing will almost definitely contain cursing and, considering my way of things, probably violence at some point in time.

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_"I see my appearance startles you." --Raistlin, Chronicles 1: Dragons of Autumn Twilight_

_--- _

The city was bustling full with people, which was pretty common during the day, but it didn't make the noise of the dozens of people chattering any more tolerable. To make it worse, the midday sun was bothering my eyes, me being someone who would be holed up in a classroom at this hour. I was likely going to have a wonderfully sized headache by the end of this buying trip.

I dreaded leaving the academy or my dormitory cubicle in these hours, but the fact of the matter was that I needed more than food and spell components this time around. The various, particular things that I needed all have long names and are of none of your concern; just know that they are handcrafted by particular people who do not normally keep their shops open after the 17th hour.

As it is, one of them was out of the city, likely on business peddling his wares elsewhere. This was only of minor annoyance to me, as I knew him to be a bit much of a talker, and I really just wanted to return to my room and proceed to shut the door to everyone else as I go to work on my next class project. But I still had to buy essentials… some food, I needed cheese… some milk to compliment my alcohols for the weekend… god I was really going to need that alcohol this weekend after my project… I've been running low on bat guano, so might as well pick that up… What else…?

"IVES!" I heard a shout behind me. In less than a second, a flurry of red hair came up to my right, and a large, male bulk flanked my left.

"Hello," I said, regarding the two of them coolly. In truth, I was a bit happy that they were there; Mabon's half-orc appearance not only pulled down the chatter dynamic a few levels, but his huge girth thankfully blotted the sun off of me, leaving me in welcome shade.

"What're you up to?" Buzz said from atop Quitha's shoulder.

Mabon nodded. "Right, we rarely see you out at this time of day."

Behold, two of my oldest friends that I still have associations with at the academy—and the bird. Mabon is the only half-orc in Liberurbis Academy, if not the only half-orc in the city. In contrast to his orcish inheritance, he's quite hygienic and well groomed. He has a neatly trimmed black beard and his teeth are whiter and straighter than mine. But his jaw and huge size always gives him away. Also unlike his brethren, he's quite intelligent, and not particularly violent in any way. Oh, he is frightening when drunk, but that's because he's one of those touchy-feely, cuddly drunks. I'm just happy that he has too high a tolerance to get that way before the liquor runs out.

Quitha, on the other hand, is a half-elf (I associate only with halves, it seems) that inherited quite a few of her qualities from her elven father. Her last name, Naikiir, means "Gemwind", an obvious allusion to the family's crimson-red hair, which is the main way I'm able to pick her out of a crowd. She's a strange girl, to say the least. Her raven, which she so eloquently named "Buzz", speaks Common like the rest of us, albeit with a strange accent, and basically acts as one of us. Even though Quitha is incredibly intelligent as well, I find that more intellectual conversations spawn from her bird.

"I'm shopping, like most people do in the marketplace," I answered.

"Oh?" Quitha's brow rose. "What for? Maybe Buzz can help you in the price."

Buzz knew more about appraising goods than a pigeon from Venice. I told that joke to her before, but she never took that branch of history so she didn't get it. "I think I'll be fine. The rest that I have to get, I can get at the general store."

"We have to go and get some components for your final project anyway," Buzz reminded her.

"Oh, that's right. Damn." She sighed and looked at me. "Well, I'll see you later, okay?"

"Yeah, see ya," I said, and she was off.

Mabon, however, decided to stick by me as I walked through the market place and continued to talk to me. The usual stuff… mostly about our final projects, since that's what everyone has been up in arms about recently. The final projects mark the end of the semester and were almost always more brain stressing than the final tests in the non-magical classes and magical classes that dealt only with testable knowledge.

But his mind wandered about halfway through the conversation (nobody really _enjoys_ talking about final projects anyway, unless they just feel like a good rant) and looked to the side. "Hey, that pet shop's open."

"Uh huh," I said, not really caring, but I should have known that my arm would be grabbed and that I would in the next second be dragged in. Mabon was such a sucker for animals—particularly cats, which I don't blame him. Truth is, I love cats; I grew up with them. But I knew that I didn't have the money to support much more than myself at this point. And I knew just as well that it was going to be difficult to walk out of there without sternly telling myself not to buy one.

But Mabon had even less choice; his dormitory didn't allow pets, even if they were familiars. That, of course, didn't stop him from loving animals. When I said he wasn't violent, I meant that he was a complete softie. Makes it all the creepier when he's drunk.

We were greeted immediately as we entered by a somewhat obese shopkeeper who, seeing from our robes that we were wizards, proceeded to show us all the "magical" creatures in attempt to have us buy something. I kept my face stern and quickly said "No, thanks," as I looked over the many animals.

Fish, snakes, lizards, ferrets (never did like ferrets), dogs (by the gods, even these things are loud), birds (perhaps louder than the dogs), and many other things… I must say, it is interesting to see all these living creatures squirming around, basically reminding me that there are breathing things outside of the people I deal with daily. A bit refreshing to the mind.

I came up to the cats, and, like many cats would do during this hour in these circumstances, they seemed to be all sleeping. I looked over them, seeing the jellicos and the calicos and the tabbies… all breathing softly, looking contented, as cats tend to do.

Then one shot its attention up in the back and stared straight at me.

The sudden motion almost startled me, and I looked up to see two bright, yellow eyes staring at me. It was a jet-black cat with a swatch of white on his chest shaped like an hourglass. His long whiskers jutting from his face were also white, contrasting against his black fur. It walked forward towards me, still arresting my eyes with its.

"That's the first time I've seen him do that," a voice said behind me. I nearly jumped when I turned to see the shopkeeper, wondering briefly how he snuck up on me before I realized I must not have been paying attention. "He usually hates customers and stays in the back. A lady even tried to buy him once, and he scratched the daylights out of her to get away. He doesn't even like me. Surly character on him."

I looked back at the cat, and he gave a slight, asking meow, but his eyes were still quite dominating. I looked back over to the shopkeeper, who now seemed a bit amazed.

"It's an omen!" Mabon gasped. "You should buy it, Ives."

I sneered at him. "Since when do you believe in omens? You just want me to get a cat so _you_ can play with it."

"I'd appreciate it if you did buy him," the shopkeeper said, "but there's nothing magical about him, so he wouldn't be a very good familiar for you. Now, if you come this way—"

The cat made another meow, this time more assertive. The shopkeeper stopped dead in his words, and I knelt down to look at him at eye level. His stare was still oppressive and strangely cynical, but I could see a request. _Let me out of here!_

"I'll take him," I finally announced.

"Very well," the shopkeeper shrugged and opened the cage. The cat immediately jumped out and into my arms, quickly taking position on top of a shoulder. As soon as we came in contact, I was hit with the force of a ton of bricks with the power in that cat. Nothing magical about him, my ass! He had enough in him to blow up the damned shop!

I quickly paid the silver for him, to which he slashed the price to since the shopkeeper was glad to be rid of him.

"Thank you, ma'am. Have a nice day," he said, bowing his head slightly.

I blinked for a moment before turning to leave. I tended to forget my gender, and usually hung out with males (Quitha was a special case), so when I'm referred to as "ma'am", I always feel a little awkward. I still hesitate a bit when professors call me "Ms. Tarrosage". I got over it and nodded back to him.

As soon as we stepped foot out of the shop, Mabon seemed to want nothing more than to pet and play with the new cat. This cat, however, was about as anti-social as the shopkeeper described him, and skillfully avoided the half-orc's large hands, putting a nice new arrangement of holes in my skin, not to mention my robe.

I pulled the cat off my shoulders (and believe me, "pulled" is used quite literally in this instance) and proceeded to glare down my large friend. "Don't you have your own shopping to do? I've got to go buy food and spell components, and I don't need you lumbering over me, stirring up this thing while he's already bound to be quite estranged as it is."

My tone of voice hit its mark, and Mabon frowned, his large shoulders slumping. It wasn't hard to depress him, and I usually avoided it because he wasn't pleasant to be around when he was mopey, but I'd prefer having to swim in half-orc tears at this point than be in need of a new robe by the end of the day.

"I guess you're right," he mumbled, "Well, have a good day, I guess."

"You too." I waved as he left, and looked over at my new companion as I walked towards the general store. "Might as well get you some food. You wouldn't happen to be able to tell me what you prefer to eat, would you?"

"As a matter of fact, I can," he answered in a hissing voice, and my eyes shot wide.

"By the 9th level of the eternal tortures, you spoke!" I nearly yelled in my surprise. "I know that you have more magic in you than the average academy mage, but still! The only talking familiars I've ever seen were ravens!"

"Well, you already knew that I was quite different," he responded arrogantly.

I composed myself quickly and looked away towards the street. "Fine. Then I suppose you already have a name for me to call you?"

"You will call me Raistlin." His hissing speech made an emphasis on his name.

"Fine, _Raistlin_," I mimicked his own hiss as I spoke his name, now not looking on him. "What would you prefer to eat, or would you rather we get to the store before you decide? I do hope your tastes aren't expensive, as I am but a poor academy student."

"No worries. I eat little," he answered quickly, "And most provisions you would have for cats, I am not in need of. For instance, I do not need one of those damned litter boxes…"

"Oh?" I dared to look at him again, and found that I was growing used to his stare (which was particularly imperious, even for a cat). "So you can use a commode?"

The white whiskers perched over his eyes shot up, and he seemed in confusion. "Commode? Is that the thing in those bathrooms that make the '_fsshhh_'ing noise when you pull a lever?"

I sighed. "Yes, that's a commode. How are you sure that you know how to use it if you don't know what it is?"

"I know!" He snapped back. "Don't assume that I don't! You get rid of waste by pulling the lever, right? That's all that I need to know!"

I nodded. "As long as I don't have to clean up after you, I'm not going to complain."

He made a catty "huff" and looked away. "You'd better not."

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My first Dragonlance...ish... fic. So you are required to review. More chapters later, and possibly another story later that has to do with someone _not _Raistlin (which this section is in dire need of). 


	2. History

Disclaimer: ♪ Refer to chapter one! ♫

Ah, lucky for you, my dear confused readers, that the world will be explained in this chapter.  
By the way, in case you're wondering, I do not have any romance planned; I made the OC female for various reasons, but that's not one of them. However, I can't promise that it won't end up that way; for all I know, this fic could end up with Quitha switching places with Tanis and Mabon switching with Caramon. Then Raistlin and Ives fuse, turning into an ambiguous cat-person archmage that sees death wherever it goes…  
…That'd be pretty cool, actually. In a hokey, Toriyama-meets-Hickman-in-a-bar way.

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_"My personal history is of no consequence compared to the history of the world." --- Astinus, Chronicles 3: Dragons of Spring Dawning_

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I had many strange dreams that night. I rationalized it later that day in telling myself that it was just stress from the final project, but I soon realized that my dreams had not such simple causes.

In any case, as I lay in the bed, I felt a weight oppressing my chest. The weight wasn't so stifling until I felt warm air puff into my face. Almost choking, my eyes finally opened.

Two yellow eyes stared back at me.

"GAH!" I swiped the cat off of me, and in three seconds remembered my place and the name of the perpetrator. "Raistlin! You wanking bastard of a feline!" I shouted as well as I could with a dry throat. "What's the meaning of perching upon my chest and getting in my face as I sleep?"

Raistlin quickly regained his composure after being so unceremoniously thrown off. "You stated yourself that you needed to be up by the ninth hour. You almost over slept."

I hissed and looked over at the clock, informing me that it was now about 8:47 A.M. "Damnit, I said nine _thirty_! As in half-past! I don't have class until then, and my alarm clock…"—I pointed at the large clock with two bells perched symmetrically on top—"…was already set to wake me at the ninth hour, to give me plenty of time to get up and get dressed before I leave. I didn't need _you_ to replace it." I looked away, annoyed and cranky from being up 13 minutes earlier than needed, and pulled out the pin in the back of the clock to keep it from ringing. It wasn't needed now.

The little amount of time that I had already spent with Raistlin had proven interesting. I found quite quickly that he was intelligent—likely more intelligent than at least Buzz—and that he seemed quite knowledgeable about magic. However, that's where his knowledge seemed to end, as I found myself the night before explaining how many of my things worked when he decided to "survey" my cubicle.

I didn't really mind him snooping around, since I knew that cats did that when introduced to new surroundings, but it seemed plain ridiculous when he began asking questions about the utilities (other than the commode) in the bathroom. I eventually growled at him that it wasn't necessary for him to know, and that he should just use his tongue like a normal cat. He wasn't quite fond of that idea, to say the least, and he pursued in asking how to work the sink in more demanding tones.

Then he proceeded to use the sink as he own personal bathtub. Normally, I'd be a bit vexed because of the fur in the drain, but I have to admit, I never saw a cat bath itself using water before. And if you never saw a cat try to soap its own fur, well, you haven't seen everything yet.

And drying himself—ha! First he tried crawling under the towel, and then he tried rolling on top of it. He finally gave up and shook his fur out, but he still refused to groom himself with his tongue and walked around the cubicle for an hour with his fur sticking straight out. I don't think I helped his pride with my constant snickers, either, and this only heightened my amusement.

This image floated through my groggy brain and I started chuckling dryly, getting an odd stare from Raistlin who was most likely confused on my sudden change in mood. Without offering any explanation, I pulled myself out of the bed, recalling that I had bedwear on before I started getting dressed. I'm one of those people that happen to sleep in little to nothing since I live alone, but I had a feeling the cat would have a hang-up on that as well. I must've guessed well on what kind of prudishness he could have, because he quickly reprimanded me for stripping before him to get into my robes and shouted at me to change in the bathroom.

I glared back at him. "Look, if it bothers you that much, turn away! I'm not about to hide away from my own bedroom just to dress for some mouthy familiar, okay?" He matched my glare and then some, but he turned around without a word and left me to change in peace.

Afterwards, I picked up my books and keys and went for the door. When I opened the door, stepping across the threshold, I looked back at him. "Coming?"

"What?"

"Students are permitted to take their familiars into class except during tests and special occasions," I said quickly, "They acknowledge that many wizards do not like parting with their familiars in any occasion. As long as you keep quiet, there won't be any complaints."

"Oh? Would they react badly to a talking cat?"

"It's not that; talking familiars are encouraged to keep quiet during lectures and discussions to encourage the student to think and speak alone…" I shrugged, remembering how this rule fared with classes I had Quitha and Buzz in. "Whether or not the rule is effective in promoting that behavior is a matter of opinion."

"Fine, I'll come with you and refrain from speaking." He walked to my side and followed me out.

Raistlin's breed turned out to be harder to pick out than just some generic shorthair. His body was long-boned, but a bit much on the lean side, making him look particularly lanky as he moved about. When he sat straight up, it extended his height, giving an added grim look to his arrogant posture. Not sure what kind of breed, or breed combination, would make that sort of body structure.

These lanky movements seemed to gain some attention as we walked through the campus and down the halls to the classroom. He got quite a few stares, despite that black cats are rather common familiars. When I entered the classroom and sat in my usual place at the far table, he leapt up and settled himself beside me, crossing his front legs over each other in a dignified manner as he lay on the table.

I smirked at his demeanor. _He never lets up, does he?_

The professor entered, closing the door behind him, and class began. Raistlin, as promised, kept quiet, but, more than once, looked over at me in a questioning gaze as the professor went through various topics. I only smiled back at him; he must've expected a class on magic, not one on ancient Indust-World history. When we exited, he felt the need to discuss the matter at once.

"What in the Abyss was that man talking about!" Raistlin's usual hissing speech changed to a growl.

_What an interesting way to react to a history class_, I thought. "That class deals with a specific time period in Indust-World history. Not all the classes that I take at the academy are magical. Which reminds me, I'll have to do my homework for my philosophy class during my lunch break."

Raistlin shook his head. "Okay, I understand the part about non-magical classes. I figured that out when I realized that man was not talking about magic. But you said that it's history? Of _what_ world?"

I raised my brow at him, almost stopping in my steps to contemplate him. "You mean you don't know anything about the Indust-World? It was the half of Vearth that consisted almost completely of humans and had advanced in technology before the Gods' Impact almost a millennium ago."

That confused look returned on the cat's thin face. "…What?"

This time I had to stop. "You're kidding me. You didn't understand a word I just said?"

"Ives!" I felt a heavy hand slap my back and I nearly fell forward onto the feline. I turned around to see Mabon, grinning with his big, white, straight teeth. He has a freaky smile if you're not used to it. "Don't stand around; you'll be late for class. Hey!" He peered around me to Raistlin. "Is that the cat that you bought yesterday? You brought him? Does that mean you're making him your familiar?"

"Yeah, that's what he is, all right. His name's Raistlin."

"Raistlin, huh? That's a weird name. Why'd you choose it?" He leaned over to take a better look at the cat. "And you sure about making him a familiar? I thought the shopkeeper said there was nothing magical about him."

"That shopkeeper knew about as much of magic as a donkey knows to read," Raistlin answered cynically, "And, for your information, _she_ did not choose it. Raistlin has always been my name."

Mabon blinked and stood his full height in surprise. "He talks! He didn't talk before!"

"Perhaps I didn't feel it necessary to talk to the likes _you_," Raistlin retorted, "Must I perform tricks for every passing mental defective that I come across?"

The half-orc frowned. "Well, the shopkeeper was right about his attitude, at least."

Raistlin seemed to have decided that Mabon was no longer worth paying attention to and turned back to me. "What was that you were saying? Gods' Impact? Vearth?"

I shook my head. "You really confuse me, Raistlin. You honestly don't know about that? Do you know anything outside of magic and big words? Honestly, what kind of magical, talking cat doesn't know common knowledge like that?"

His eyes narrowed on me, and I had the distinct feeling of being stared down at by a superior for unwarranted behavior. "You would take more care in your words, _girl_, if you knew what you were up against."

But what intimidation I might have felt was dashed aside with a strike of amusement. "_'Girl'_?" I repeated then leaned down and stared straight back at him, emphasizing my height advantage by using this motion to show that even as I knelt down this far, I was still over him. "I haven't been called _girl_ in many years, and I don't think fondly of the memories I have of anyone who did." I kept my voice harsh, but I wasn't able to hold back the grin of my suppressed laughter. "I would suggest to you, _little grimalkin_, to not cross your master." I stood and glanced over at Mabon. "We've wasted enough time in the hall. Lets get to class before it starts."

We started walking quickly, as the people in the halls and walkways were already thin as students went into their respective classrooms. Raistlin, being a cat, had no trouble keeping up with us, but he quickly learned to stay away from Mabon and under his feet as we went, lest he wanted to be flattened.

The three of us reached our destination quickly went inside of the room to sit down. Unlike the last classroom, which had a more communal setting with the shared tables and the circular arrangement, this classroom had large desks all set towards the front of the room; this room was meant for magic instruction.

I took my seat, Mabon sitting himself beside me, and Raistlin, unbidden, jumped up onto my table.

"You might like this next professor," I said to Raistlin without looking at him, too busy rummaging through my desk for materials, "She's as much of a grimalkin as you are."

Raistlin didn't seem amused by the comment, but it made Mabon laugh, followed by him adding on, "Doctor Verobsance does have a bad manner, but you really aren't in any position to talk, Ives."

"That's different. But Raistlin, she's the oldest professor in this academy, and she's the head of the department, so to speak. Quite possibly the strongest wizard in this city, if not all of Vearth, and the whole campus knows it. This class is on Evocation. Later in the day, I have another class under her on Necromancy."

"The strongest, hmm?" Raistlin pondered on this before shaking his head. "Wait, you said that you have a class in Necromancy?"

"Mhm."

"What kind of mage are you? What kind of mage is _she_?"

I raised a brow, not entirely understanding the question. "Uh, I don't think she has a specific discipline that she adheres to, and I haven't chosen a discipline either."

"No, I refer to your robe colors. Are her robes black? I notice that your robes are green… strange. And you study Necromancy _openly_?"

"Huh?" I felt myself growing more confused. "What are you talking about? Yes, I study Necromancy openly, but what does that have to do with—"

Everyone silenced at once. The intense feeling of magical power as she entered seemed to fill the room and oppress us, and she closed the door behind her, and the quickly quieted room echoed with its thud.

Verobsance took position in the front of the room, taking a moment to look over her students. She was a full human as I, but had many more years behind her. Her face was marked with creases of age, and her gray hair, pulled up to perch on the top of her head with a blue head wrap as the rest of her hair, was allowed to fall back. Her dark eyes scanned over the class before stopping on Raistlin and I.

She grinned, her thin, red-painted lips dimpling into her creased cheeks. "I see that you finally obtained a familiar, Ms. Tarrosage," she said as she folded her arms into her maroon robes. "Quite an… interesting one, too. What is his name?"

I hesitated in answering, noticing the strange note in the voice, as if her question had more than curiosity held in it. I ignored the impression with a shrug. "Raistlin."

"Ah. Fascinating," Verobsance said wistfully, as if already forgetting the slight exchange of words, then turned her attention back to the others. "All right, I do hope that you have all prepared the 'Floating Disk' spell for class as I have instructed…"

The class went without much problem; save that Mabon had to ask me for some mercury and two of the other students hadn't prepared the spell (I had prepared it during the last class while taking notes). When we left for lunch, Raistlin quickly made clear his impression of Verobsance after he was safely outside of her earshot.

"I don't trust her."

"No one does, really." I shrugged. "But she's knowledgeable and talented in the field, so no one complains."

"But her power, and the way she acts… I don't see why your classmates go under her tutelage if they are so repressed by it. And why did she have so many of those pigments on her face?"

"…You mean her _make-up_?"

"Make-up? Is that what you people call that paint I've seen women wear?"

"By the gods, Raistlin!" I looked straight down at him. "How can someone be so intelligent and so ignorant at the same time? I know that you're a cat, but this is too much! You don't know the names for everyday items, and you don't even seem to have the most basic understanding of our world's history! Exactly how much do I have to explain to you?"

The whiskers over his eyes lowered. "I'm not enjoying my nescience any more than you are. But at least explain to me the 'basic' history of this world so I'm not completely in the dark."

We walked into the nearby café and I sat my books down on my favorite table. "Fine, wait until I get something to eat and I'll explain the whole thing over a sandwich."

I didn't have another class until the 14th hour, so I found myself allowing the explanation go for a couple hours. I told Raistlin about the histories of the two separate worlds, what we now call "Indust-World" and "Abeir-World", in more detail than I originally intended.

I explained how "Indust-World" had been populated mostly by humans, who bread so quickly and advanced so fast in technology that most other races had either gone into hiding or had gotten extinct. They had all but forgotten magic and sorcery, and although there were those who clung to these ideas, most of the intellectual class shunned it as superstition and focused on developing other sciences. There was fast and effective transportation and communication that spanned the whole globe by the end.

"Abeir-World" was vastly different; technology wasn't terribly important to the many races, being that several of them had natural affinities to magic, and some did not normally have the patience and/or intelligence to comprehend complicated gadgets. The studious turned their minds to magic, and where "Indust-World" had made a network of intellectuals through science, the intellectuals of "Abeir-World" made theirs through spells. But even though technology wasn't entirely trusted in the "Indust-World", the people of "Abeir-World" were even more wary of magic and were unable to let it reach its potential because of it.

Then came the "Gods' Impact". This event is shrouded in mystery, as the people based in the Indust-World, without any good knowledge of magic, had no good explanation, and the people of Abeir-World were in mass confusion, knowing it to be the work of the gods, but unable to define _which_ gods. It was rumored, however, that it had to do with a goddess based in Indust-World that had a small contingent of followers in Abeir-World. Legend goes that something had happened to her favorite cleric, a bronze half-dragon oddly enough, and she made an agreement with the gods who had been worshipped by the cleric's companions to combine their energies. This required her to take resources from her birthing place of Indust-World, accidentally causing a catastrophe of great proportions. The energy of the gods made the worlds magnetize to each other in planes, and they combined into a single world.

The result was a completely new world, with the population on both sides taking heavy tolls from the upheaval of landscapes and elements. Seas turned into oceans, oceans turned into seas, continents turned into islands, et cetera. This world, with how it was combined, was so vastly different in so many ways from the previous world that they could no longer use the old names that they used to describe it. Instead, they called it "Vearth".

The humans of Abeir-World quickly took in the humans of Indust-World. But the Indust-World humans were, on large, so intrigued by the other races and so conditioned by their global communication to be tolerant, did not share in the Abeir-World humans' prejudices that they might have had on any of the races. They continued their pursuit in technology and, as the scientists merged with the mages, magic became an academic pursuit along side any other field. Any magic that would have been avoided or shunned was now made acceptable under the study to promote advancement of understanding.

Of course, my recount of these things, being that I was intensely interested in history and had taken many classes in it, was much more detailed. Mabon quickly grew bored and said little, having little to add to the discussion, and did little more than give a valediction when he had to leave for class. Like clockwork, Quitha and Buzz came in right after he left, cheerfully greeting us only to have her words swallowed up by my discussion with Raistlin. Quitha was able to add a bit to the history of the Indust-World and Vearth, but Buzz seemed to know much more on that subject.

Though, I probably should have noticed how she didn't seem fazed at all about Raistlin's power or his ability to talk; she seemed more intent on petting him instead of talking to him, anyway. Raistlin, of course, didn't allow her to and dodged away from her hands quickly.

And Raistlin asked many questions, which was another one of the reasons I allowed the conversation to go so long. At one point, he seemed intently curious about the original names of the worlds and their continents. I recounted them to him, and he game the impression of frowning and shook his head, as if expecting to recognize one of the names.

After I felt I gave enough answers to him, and he felt that he had enough questions, I leaned back and took a long drink of my soda. Quitha took this as a sign to start a different conversation and quickly initiated a few ideas onto our ears, hoping to get some more talking out of the new companion in our group.

Then Raistlin said, "Ives, didn't you say earlier that you had to do some work for a philosophy class?"

"…Shit."

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Foreshadowing with a capital "F".  
Anyone who can guess what both of the two original worlds were gets a cookie.  
I'll give you guys a hint: neither of them were Krynn. 


	3. The Sly One

Disclaimer: I put it in chapter one.

Huzzah! I have reviewing readers! But really? No takers in guessing the two worlds? Come on… you guys should _at least_ be able to guess what Indust-World was…

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_"Raistlin! Hah! Look at his robes, Tanis!" --- Sturm, Chronicles 2: Dragons of Winter Night._

---

I went over the semantics of the material I was trying to digest in my head a bit, and I looked over to Raistlin. He was wide-awake at the moment, one of my history books open for him to read, apparently doing the same thing as I was. The cat seemed determined to not be ignorant of this world or any of its common knowledge, making it seem that to be unaware of anything was unforgivable in his mind. The history book he now had before him dealt with the history of magic, so it had more about Abeir-World than Indust-World in it, and about half of it dealt with the last millennium that Vearth has existed.

But the book I was reading wasn't a book for a class, nor was it any sort of spellbook. It was a book that, though there were no rules written against it, was strictly forbidden. It was a book that if I were caught reading it, I would most surely be kicked out of the academy. This book was more of a danger to my scholarly career than any number of drunken parties or crushing final projects. And with _Raistlin_ living with me now, it was going to be a little more difficult to keep my owning it out of the knowledge of others, and _a lot_ more difficult to practice what the book taught without being seen.

I shut the book and rubbed my eyes, going over the techniques described in my head a little before allowing my mind to get off of the subject, then put the book away (on a high shelf, hopefully high enough to be out of Raistlin's reach), and plopped back down onto my bed.

Raistlin looked up from the textbook. "Don't you have a class later today?"

"Not until the thirteenth hour."

"I see. Where you preparing a spell for it just now?"

"No… That wasn't a spellbook."

"Is that so?" He tilted his head slightly, as if analyzing me as he spoke. "You were mumbling and going over the same pages repeatedly, like you were studying a spell. If you weren't studying a spell, what were you studying?"

"I'll explain later," I said gruffly, hoping that I sounded casual and tired enough to keep him from getting suspicious and thinking that my reluctance to speak about it was nothing more than a result of fatigue. At the same time, I mentally reprimanded myself for letting myself mumble while I studied. "The only class I have today is my rhetoric class. If you want to come, you can. Doctor Arisonez allows familiars to join the debates; you might find it entertaining."

He seemed to consider this for a moment before he shrugged. "Perhaps, perhaps not. In truth, I would much prefer studying at the moment and getting at least reasonably adept with some of these things I'm unaware of. But it sounds like it could be interesting later."

"Understandable," I answered, then stretched as I lay in my bed. I put my hands behind my head and stared at the ceiling. "I think that today's a lecture day, anyway, so there wouldn't be a debate. Maybe I'll stay in here until class, though."

"Not going to eat lunch with those two morons and the buzzard?"

"I don't feel particularly hungry… or sociable at the moment. But I still don't have class for a few hours." I rolled over. "Maybe I'll take a nap. Could you wake me up? I don't want to bother setting the alarm."

"I thought you disliked me waking you after yesterday morning."

"That was just me being a night-walker roused ten minutes earlier than necessary. Do you need me to get out any books for you to read after that one?"

"There's no need; all the books that I intend to study today, you already set on the floor for me."

"That's good…" The room went silent for a while, and I drifted off into sleep.

.-.-.

_"The Order has never tested one so young," the master said. "And you chose him! Of all my pupils, he is the most unworthy. I simply do not understand."_

_"You don't like him, do you?" another voice asked mildly. This voice spoke with more experience and dignity than the first._

_The master's superior? Hmm… most certainly._

_"No one does," the master snapped. "There is no compassion in him, no humanity. He is greedy and grasping, difficult to trust. Did you know that his nickname among the other students is the Sly One? He absorbs from everyone's soul and gives back nothing of his own. His eyes are mirrors; they reflect all he sees in cold, brittle terms."_

_Who are they talking about?_

_"He is highly intelligent," the other suggested._

_"Oh, there's no denying that." The master sniffed. "He is my best pupil. And he has a natural affinity for magic. Not one of those surface users."_

_"Yes," the other agreed. "Raistlin's magic springs from deep within."_

_Raistlin?_

_"But it springs from a dark well," the master said, and I could imagine him shaking his head. "Sometimes I look at him and shudder, seeing the Black Robes fall upon him. That will be his destiny, I fear."_

_"I think not," the other said thoughtfully. "There is more to him than you see, though I admit he keeps it well hidden. More to him than he knows himself, I'll wager."_

.-.-.

"Ives."

My eyes popped open, and I was now looking at the cat.

"You're class will begin soon. You should pack up and leave."

I blinked at him a moment and looked at the clock. Sure enough, he was telling the truth. "I slept that long?"

"You mumbled some things in your sleep," he said as if giving a statistic then jumped down from the bed. I watched him as he moved, remembering still the words in my dream.

But the words echoed into each other and already seemed to be getting garbled. I knew that soon I would only be left with impressions.

I shook my head. "I guess today's a mumbling today." I picked my books up quickly and put them in my bag, but the separate blank book that I kept for my notes, I did not place inside of it; I tucked it under my arm instead. "I'll be back at the end of the hour after the class, okay?"

"Yes, I know. I will stay here and study while you are gone."

I nodded and left. As soon as I exited the dormitory, I opened the note journal and snatched out the pen I kept in it, turning the pages onto a blank part a little after the center—far from the notes but far from the back cover as well—as I slung the books over my shoulder. I didn't want to forget the dream, so I decided to write all that I could remember. Rapidly, the words from the conversation were drawn onto the pages, the ink hitting and absorbing into the paper almost faster than I could recall the words. It was as if I was possessed as I wrote.

In this state, I had somehow scribbled out every word by the time I entered the classroom and sat down beside one of the communal tables. I turned the pages of my journal to the notes for the class, but that didn't keep my mind on the subject; I don't think it helped that the class was about rhetoric, and the conversation in the dream being itself a debate.

Raistlin spoke before of robe colors… and he asked if Doctor Verobsance's robes were black. Black Robes… the master in the dream—Raistlin's teacher, I presumed, but how I knew him as a master was beyond me—didn't seem to think fondly of those who wore "Black Robes". I strained my mind to think if there was ever any mention of robe colors in the history of the separate worlds. The closest I got was the mention of "black" and "white" magic in Indust-World, which was disregarded as loose classification to simplify the many disciplines for a population that was mostly unaware or unbelieving of magic. But they never spoke of robes, to my knowledge.

And the person they spoke of seemed to be none other than Raistlin himself. Unless these men knew something I didn't about animals, they were almost certainly speaking of him as a man. _The Sly One_, the master said. I pondered on this as well. No one trusted him? The other voice seemed to have faith in him, but his own teacher disliked him, maybe even feared him. What would he say now, to see this pupil a cat?

My thoughts turned grim. He, perhaps, would tell me that I am a fool to let Raistlin come into my life as I did. Thinking back, I did not really pick Raistlin from the pet shop. No, I was simply dragged into the shop, not searching for a familiar. That cat, if he stayed down as he did with other customers and slept as the others of his kind, I would not have noticed him and moved on, not buying anything from that store. If anyone did the choosing, it was Raistlin that chose me!

_But why?_

_The Sly One, the Sly One…_

"Tarrosage," a voice said, and I looked up at the doctor with wide eyes. _Damn, did he catch me daydreaming?_ It was a silly notion, as the doctors in academies didn't care about their students' attention drifting as much as the tutors in public education.

He continued, "Would you please read the next part on the page?"

"Uh…" I looked down at my open book and spoke honestly. "Which part do you mean, sir?"

"The third paragraph on the right. If you would read on until the end of the section?"

I nodded and did so, all the while repeating the strange nickname in my head. It repeated in my head with such clawing fury, I was surprised it did not slip into my words as I read the passage aloud. But by the time I spoke the last sentence, a grin of confident reassurance crept across my face.

Why should I worry? After all, cats are sly by nature. Raistlin is no different. Is his choosing me to have as his wizard any different from how any cat claimed a "master"? And if he _might _have been a person before, so what? He was a cat now.

_What harm could he possibly bring upon me?_

After the class, I walked back slowly to the room, my mind no longer on the dream. No, the content of the book I was reading earlier was more important at the moment. I couldn't practice the techniques in it… not yet. There was still too much risk in letting anyone else know, and I no longer had a room entirely to myself. But I would need to soon, I knew.

I pondered on finding an area where I could practice the techniques undisturbed. The labs that were meant specifically for arcane practice would be a good choice, as they had wards on them to disallow anyone from entering as one worked. But they were populated constantly, and even though you can get a room to yourself and none of the rooms or doors had windows, it was impossible to keep any loud or flashy business from exciting the others in the halls… _especially_ if they didn't sense any magic coming from the room. _I might have to go off academy grounds to practice._

I opened the door to my room and glanced about, not immediately seeing any sign of the cat when my eyes crossed over the open books strewn on the floor. "Hey, Raistlin, I'm ba—" I froze when I saw him.

He was on the high bookshelf, inspecting the books.

"Hmm, you're back already?" he said, his tone somewhat bemused, as if I had interrupted his thoughts with my entrance. He glanced over to the clock. "I see. It seems as though I've lost track of time a bit."

"_What are you doing on the shelf?_" I tried to speak calmly and to not show my anxiety, but my eyes fell and my hand went to my head, my voice soft and thick. I must've sounded suddenly ill.

"I was simply curious about some of your other books," he said dryly.

"Earlier, you said that you had all the books you needed for today already on the floor." Now I had to control my breathing as it tried to turn rapid. I scolded myself inwardly, telling myself that I was overreacting. But it took all my willpower to keep my lungs in check, and that was not something that would just go by Raistlin.

"Why did you suddenly begin to panic?" The whiskers over one eye rose noticeably. "I'm not going to do anything foolish. You know that."

"I-I know," I said, and nearly fell down onto the bed, my legs no longer able willing to hold me, my eyes glued to the floor. One hand still held my head while the other I had pressed against my chest. Now, I left dizzy and lightheaded, likely due to my unusual breathing. _I'm overreacting! I must calm down and get a hold of myself!_

I felt Raistlin's weight hit into the bed beside me as he jumped down from the shelf. "Is it because I was on a high shelf, or is it because of the books? I assure you, I know what I'm doing on both accounts."

"It's… hard to explain," I choked out. That was a lie; I could probably explain the whole deal in a few minutes without trouble, but that would mean explaining the book's contents. Regardless, I had to say something before he became suspicious. "But it's a book. The purple one with the green binding. Don't touch it."

"The one you were reading earlier," he said, stating it more as a fact than as a confirmation. "That's the most curious book. Its presence is… strange, but what I feel from it certainly not magic."

"And you will _stay away from it_," I growled in spite of my logical mind, "Understood?"

He was silent for a while and shrugged. "I understand. You distrust me."

_Difficult to trust._ I frowned, and my logic jolted back into function. He was testing me, I knew. So I looked him straight in the eye, replacing any inclination of upset with an illusion of fatigue again. Despite the nap I had earlier, I didn't have to try hard for that act. "I admit that I have yet to learn to trust you—it has only been two days, after all—but this is a matter that I have revealed to no one. Quitha and Mabon don't even know about that book's existence in my room."

"Is that so?" He looked back up to it, then back at me. "Then you're being rather bold in comparison, to not only study it in my presence, but to tell me this much of it."

"So I am," I answered before looking away. "But I'm going to try the gamble and just hope that the game isn't rigged. Right now, I'm betting on the assumption that you don't have a reason to work against me… yet."

He must have thought this amusing, because he laughed. It was a strange laugh, too… shrill and mocking. I wasn't sure if the sound was unique to him or came from him being a cat. "Interesting terms your putting on this. I assume, then, that the only reason that I'm getting this much information is because I'm living with you? Or do you think I'm no threat, being merely a cat?"

"You would be correct... in the former notion," I answered carefully. Trust was one thing, but I was having second thoughts on letting myself underestimate him. "The whole matter would be infinitely easier if I could assuredly trust you with it. But look, it's more than the contents of that book to me; it actually goes pretty personal. Perhaps I can trust you later, but not now."

Though most of what I said didn't seem to jar him in the least bit, the last thing made him blink. I noticed it, but I didn't spare any thoughts to it and looked down at the books on the floor. "Do you need any confirmation with any of the material you were studying?" I changed the subject. "Or some deeper insight perhaps?"

"No, that's fine," he said, then jumped back down onto the floor. "I'll study until dinner, then I'll probably sleep for the night. Will we be eating in the room again, or eating out like you normally do for lunch?"

"I don't know. Maybe we'll meet with Mabon and Quitha and go out to eat. But I have a feeling they'll talk about nothing more than their final projects for class." Then my own words hit me, and I groaned. "Damnit, the final projects! I haven't been working on them at all since I got you!"

"Those final projects… they're for your magic classes?"

"Yeah, they're due at the end of the term along the same time as the finals and the big class papers." I shook my head. "And I have _two_ projects to do for Doctor Verobsance! And she grades so harshly!"

"You act as if it's very serious."

"It _is_ very serious, Raistlin! I've been working for months and I'm only half finished with either of them! The end of the term is coming up, and I have barely touched those projects all week! By the gods, there's no way I'm going to finish them in time!"

"The classes that you have under that Verobsance woman are on Evocation and Necromancy, correct?"

"Huh?" I looked down at time. "Well, yes they are, but…"

"I might not be yet very versed in the material that is covered in most of your classes, but magic has been my life." He stepped forward to me and sat down, sitting straight and tall. "I'm your familiar, correct? I suppose I should begin acting as such."

After a long pause, I smiled. "Thank you, Raistlin."

* * *

Bwaaah! Déjà vu! –shivers in remembrance of finals week- So… many… printed… pages…  
What's in that book she has…? Bah, you'll see soon enough.  
Yeah, this chapter was probably pretty boring. But it is necessary, I tell you! _NECESSARY_. 


	4. Escape

Disclaimer: Chapter one, yo.

Hehe, I'm getting quite interesting reviews... and satisfying at that, as you guys seem quite distressed on all of the yet-to-be-explained plot points that I've been throwing about. Too bad for you guys that I can't divulge most of your questions, being that they're spoilers for later. Heheh...But I can answer a couple, though don't be disappointed if even these answers are vague.  
Wicked Seraphina: Raist's eating habits will be explained in this chapter. And, well, you can _attempt_ to pet Raistlin, but I can't promise you that he wont A) Dodge away before you can touch him, or B) scratch you to death.  
Uncherished Light: Yes there is a particular reason that Raistlin doesn't trust her.  
I can see where you can find Harry Potter, but in truth, I only watched the movies, so I haven't been taking any references from there. And the proper question wouldn't be "Would he be a red kitty if he didn't change his robes?" rather than, "If he didn't change his robes, would he have even become a kitty?". ;)  
Arthas: Correct! One of the words is, indeed, Earth. It's "Indust-Word" to be precise (due to our industry). But don't let the "V" in "Vearth" throw you off in guessing "Abeir-World"; its a connection that works well in my mind, but is obscure otherwise.

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"_I notice you drink nothing stronger than water, my dear brother." --- Raistlin, Dragons of Summer Flame_

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Dreams became progressively stranger, but I now rarely left them with little more than impressions and residual emotions afterwards. The one I could remember the best, my right hand was burning up, as if it was being coated by molten gold. I was searching in the night sky for the Sister, our one, silver moon made of the combination of both Abeir-World's and Indust-World's moons, combined to look as distinct halves while the "tears" of the Abeir-World's moon danced playfully around the union of the Sister.

Strange people appeared around me, interrupting my search. The one wearing white confused me the most. This person was crippled—or otherwise handicapped—and kept trying to tell me something, but I couldn't understand. The words kept getting whisked away with the winds. Names kept swirling in my head. I tried to grasp a hold of a name, but they all slipped out as soon as I attempted, like trying to capture an eel in water with too big hands.

Then I thought I saw the Sister, but the moon looked strange; it didn't have any of the features of the Sister, including the jagged mark where the moons combined into one. And the joyful tears were gone. For a moment, I thought they were replaced by drops of blood when a flash of red light came to my sight.

I woke up, somewhat dazed, but relieved when I saw the Sister's familiar light shining through the blinds of my window. Satisfied, I snatched my burning hand out from under the sleeping cat, then rolled over and fell back to sleep.

Even though I worshipped no god (something for which I am continually reprimanded, since an Abeir-World belief that people who had no deity would be forced to wander an empty plain for the rest of time still prevailed today), I went to a temple the next day. I wasn't seeking solace for a disturbance, or a cryptic, vague answer to a philisophical question. I just wanted to see if I could remember a name, and part of me thought I would find that odd person in white. I wandered around for ten minutes, got bored, then went back to my dormitory. Not much else happened that day, except that I stopped by a florists along the way.

.-.-.-.

Usually, when the day that finals begins rears its ugly head, I'm two steps away from locking myself away as a nervous wreck while drowning in paper, staples, textbooks, and spell components. But this time, I was barely wading in a pond of non-magical study as the arcane rains, though they appeared threatening as thick, black clouds that approached, were subdued easily, and I was able to escape with my sanity intact.

Before, I wouldn't have thought that I would appreciate having a familiar so much, not thinking that they did more than some tricks and help a wizard spy on his surroundings. Raistlin, however, with his great knowledge of magic, was an unexpected help with my studies. Particularly, he was undeniably useful as I worked on my projects, providing me with quick, distinct knowledge when it was needed, often saving me hours of meticulous searching through texts for syllables or a specific property.

Otherwise, he proved interesting in other subjects. He came to a fairly structured understanding to many of the subjects, particularly the histories, and there were even times that I felt he was getting more out of the lectures than I was. He also shown himself as quite eloquent with his ability to run circles around others with words in the debate class. I'd be smug about having such an intelligent familiar if he didn't also trip me up with his tongue a couple of times.

But classes were now behind me, and so where the finals that came with them. And, after long hours of study, working, and writing long essays that cramp the hand, I had my heart set on doing the proper form of celebrating and relaxation that any self-respecting collage student indulged in. Yes, it was time to join a drinking party.

I wasn't the only one thinking along these lines; it seems that my entire dormitory populous (including magicians as well as non-magicians that go to the academy) had planned on a night of alcohol consumption and experimentation with various herbs (some not quite spell components, but still quite "magical" in their own ways). But first, before crashing into kegs and liquor bottles, I had to eat.

"Raistlin," I called out through the room as I checked the money I had, "We're eating out with Mabon and Quitha tonight."

"I'd rather not," he said back, but from where, I was uncertain; he wasn't in plain sight, but appeared to still be in the room, so I assumed he was under some furniture.

I sighed. He did this often; staying behind when it didn't appear that I would take the book with me. The game was normally easy enough to play; if he stayed behind, I took it with me and hid it among my books I needed for class. Otherwise, I'd leave it. But this also meant many more meals eaten in the room, since it'd be awkward to bring the book along to the cafeteria or a restaurant.

I had a solution for this instance, however. "I haven't gone shopping. So, if you don't come with me, you're not getting fed tonight."

This did it. Raistlin ate little, and didn't seem to enjoy eating in the same way most would, but he, like any real cat, disliked the feeling of starvation (however temporary). He quickly appeared from under a desk, his whiskers carefully set to not give away his dissatisfaction of being foiled. I grinned to my small victory and guestured him to follow as I crossed out the door.

The restaurant we went to was an average place; somewhere to run when you're tired of eating on campus. And even though it might be a quick option for most of the students, it was rarely packed, no matter what day it was. As we sat down and waited for the waitress, I politely kept myself out of any conversation that Mabon and Quitha attempted and discussed the options for the meal over with the cat.

"So what are you doing later tonight, Ives?" Quitha said as the waitress came back with our orders, reaching past Mabon to help guide her dish from the waitress' hands. "I mean, I heard that your dormitory is boozing up. You joining them?"

"That's what I was planning on, why?"

"Well, you remember what happened after last final," Mabon cut in with a frown, which was quickly interrupted at the sight of his own food.

My answer was caustic. "Of course, I remember. It's not like I was as trashed as that I wouldn't."

My dish was handed to me, and I immediately transferred some of my beef stew to a small sauce dish for Raistlin, using it as an excuse to do something while the others talked and not look awkward.

"But you were pretty bad. I mean, falling down the steps like that." Quitha didn't go into her salad, but Buzz had hopped down onto the table to peck at a few leaves from it.

Mabon had by now stuffed his mouth full and had to pause to swallow before speaking again. "Yeah, you nearly tumbled down an entire flight. That's not normal."

"I get it. No drinking and standing by stairs." I was now cutting up my apple with a knife into wedges.

"We're serious, Ives. That time last year really scared us. I mean, it's like you just _collapsed_ before you started falling down the steps. We were really worried." She sighed. "Well, what do you think about it?"

I looked up from the apple I was cutting, and looked at the two in silence for a few seconds. "Buzz just stole a cruton."

"What?...Buzz!" Quitha finally looked down at her raven's treachery, swatting at the bird as he hopped away and onto the back of a nearby chair.

Buzz quickly gulped down the evidence. "You didn't seem interested in your salad, Master."

"I was busy talking to—ah! You can be such a pain sometimes!"

I had finished cutting up a wedge into smaller pieces and carefully moved the pieces over towards Raistlin. He was already lapping up some of the stew from his small saucer, but the look in his eyes as they flicked about from person to person as we spoke showed his interest, that he was absorbing what was said and my reactions to them.

I might be out of the heat under Mabon and Quitha's scrutiny, but Raistlin was going to be a different matter entirely. Thankfully, as plans for the rest of the night were discussed during the dinner, I found that neither of them intended to go to the party being held in my dormitory. I didn't let on my relief in this, and I attempted to keep a good mood for the rest of the time, but even as I fooled them into thinking that all was well and the night had no consequence of being anything to worry about, I could feel Raistlin's eyes burning through my familial shield.

Departing from them, I didn't go straight back to the dormitory, which Raistlin recognized quickly.

"Where are we going?"

"To a liquor store to pick up some wine. Any preferences?"

"I thought you were going to sponge alcohol from the people during the party."

"That was my original plan, but..." I sighed and stopped walking in the middle of the road to turn to him. "I don't think I'll go now, and I'm glad that Mabon and Quitha won't be there; they won't be bugging me on why I didn't."

He seemed to think over this for a moment. "Does this have to do with them bringing up that accident you had last time?"

"Yes, but not in the way that you think." I continued walking, now making sure to keep my gaze set strictly forward. "Anyway, Raistlin, I hope you don't mind sharing a bottle with me tonight."

He shrugged, not looking up at me for the rest of the walk.

.-.-.-.

I opened the door with one hand, the other carrying the white, elvish wine that was chosen. Raistlin sprinted on inside and I followed, gladly shutting the door to the sound of merrymaking already drifting down the halls. He took his seat on my red cushioned chair (which had quickly become his preferred spot), watching me intentionally as I popped the cork, pulled out a glass and a dish for him, and poured.

"You know," I began in a musing tone, sitting down on my bed, "I've heard that alcohol was never particularly good for cats."

"It's not healthy for any creature, but that doesn't keep even the most intelligent ones from drinking it." He emphasized this point by giving a couple small, careful laps from the dish when it was passed to him.

I chuckled at his demeanor. "True. Very true. You know, so many talented people have lost their lives to the stuff, or some other addiction. People who are otherwise geniuses pick up a drug or something, and everything goes downhill from there. The next thing you know, you get news about your favorite writer undergoing rehabilitation after they tried to inhale sugar." I shook my head and took a drink from my glass. "I'd say that it's a pity, but I can't very well blame them."

"And yours would be alcohol, I assume," Raistlin crossed his forelegs, looking me square in the eye. "Your _escape_..."

I frowned. "But it's not the same thing. Drinking is unwinding from stress for me, not an escape..."

"Sounds to me that you're escaping from the stresses... and from the people that cause them," he retorted.

"Come on! That's completely straying from the original point. It's not like I'm drinking every day to forget the pain of being _talented_ or _intelligent_. By the planes of torture, I _have_ no talents as it is! All I have is magic, and even that..." I stopped myself, realizing that I came close to blurting out something that I didn't want to be known. I excused my silence with another drink from the glass.

In a few moments, Raistlin began to laugh in that singular laugh of his.

I narrowed my eyes on him. "What?"

He seemed to have been enjoying his laugh, because he didn't answer immediately. "The things you just said... only those who have experienced that pain can truly understand it enough to vocalize it like that. Your statement disproved itself."

"Oh really?" I hissed, and I drained the rest of the glass and set to pouring another. As I poured, I noticed that the words coming from my mouth seemed progressively angrier, like Raistlin's constant scratching on the surface of matters was agitating a defense out of me. "You, smug-talking grimalkin, who knows magic and nothing else... What would you know? Are you speaking from experience, too? Are you going to tell me high-and-mighty advice coming from years of being a confused, talking feline amongst cats who simply want to be petted and fed?" I took a gulp of my wine hardly before it settled in the glass, not really tasting it as it wet my throat, and took the short moment to set my composure again.

Raistlin, however, was now staring at me entirely in seriousness, the whiskers below his nose lowered and the ones above his eyes slightly higher, looking to me to be deep thought. Though his yellow eyes were often telling of his sardonic nature and his fiery intelligence, Raistlin's single give-away to his thoughts and emotions lie in his whiskers, which jutted starkly white against his black fur.

"You do have a point, Ives," Raistlin spoke thoughtfully, "If I speak such things, that means that I've experienced it as well."

With that turn of phrase, I was suddenly splashed with guilt, as if he took that dish of wine and threw the contents across my cheeks. I hid my face with another drink of the wine, but the bubbles and the sweetness seemed to fall flat and sour as soon as it hit my tongue. I grimaced and quickly put the glass back down. For long moments, we were both silent, but I felt that Raistlin would speak again and, fearing what words he might say or what questions he might ask, I jumped the gun.

"Why did you choose me, Raistlin?"

The whiskers over his right eye quirked. "Excuse me?"

"I didn't go into that petshop a month ago to get a familiar, or even a pet. I was dragged in there by Mabon since he loves animals but can't have animals in his dormitory. The shopkeeper said you never stood out like that—you even scratched up a customer who tried to buy you—and you practically demanded me to take you away from that place.

"I can see where a cat like you could be annoyed and even desperate to escape after being in such a place for a while. But you could have easily gotten bought by someone and ran away as soon as you left the store. You didn't. You stay low, let yourself get bought by me, and you proceed to act as my familiar. Don't get me wrong; I'm grateful for your help. But I'm not stupid, Raistlin."

A low sound came from his throat, a sigh between a growl and a purr. "No, you're not stupid, and you do well to question my motives. My actions have been suspicious enough to warrant questions."

"So why did you choose me?"

He now looked down into his wine, apparently measuring out his response. Should I tell her? How much should I tell her? Would it hurt me to say anything? Would it benefit me? Can I stay silent? Can I speak freely? I'm sure each of those questions flittered through his thoughts more than once.

A decision seemed to be made when he took another drink of his wine and sat up a little straighter, looking me in the eye again. "The first thing I remember was waking up in that place. I knew nothing of my surroundings, nothing of my predicament... Imagine if you woke up one morning and found yourself in a cramped room in a country you've never heard of or studied. You have coins in your pocket, but this place uses a different currency and those coins are rendered nothing more than useless hunks of metal. The people speak your language, but with the different idioms and culture, they might as well be speaking something else. You're effectively penniless, knowledgeless, and voiceless."

I brought my hand up to my chin and chewed into my lower lip, thinking. "Culture shock? Then you aren't from here. Where...?"

"A place you've never heard of," he answered.

My brows lowered, and I continued thinking, intensely curious. "I could look it up. I have enough material on geography that I'm sure--"

"You won't find it on any map of Vearth. Nor would you find it on compiled maps of Indust-World and Abier-World, I assure you."

I was silent for long moments, going over his words in my mind several times to ensure that I interpreted them correctly. "Raistlin... Am I to assume, then, from what you've just said, that you're from an _entirely_ different world?"

"That would be the most accurate guess you can make."

* * *

Okay, if any of you, for some strange reason, read my other fanfics, you would come to realize that drinking alcohol turns up quite often as a theme. It's inadvertant, I assure you.  
Nyehehe, already started on the next chapter a bit. 


	5. Foreign Affinity

Disclaimer: Chapter One. Chapter One. Chapter One. Chapter One. Chapter One. Chapter One. Chapter One.

Hehehe. I can't help the cliffhangers. They just sort of happen. It comes with the evil alignment, y'know. I'll try not to put another cliff up at the end of it... if I put up too many, I might just kill you guys if you wander off them.  
Uncherished Light: I was just being cryptic. Answering my own question with more than a "no" would be a spoiler. Let's just keep that if he didn't get the eyes and go black robe, he likely would not be in this position in the first place. And you've actually got good instincts about Ives: she _isn't_ the type to fall down stairs in a drunken stupor. That will be explained this chapter. As for the loner... that does match her, but free booze is free booze, and when you add a poor college student, multiply it by the _boringness_ of drinking alone... It's enough to coax even the scraggliest of hermits out of their holes in the wall.  
Silmarion: You are correct! Abeir-World is indeed Forgotten Realms! There was another reference, being the "tears" around the moon, but you picked the others out very well!  
I might as well explain the "V" in Vearth, and trust me, even if I told you this, you probably wouldn't have gotten it too easily. Vearth comes from a manga called "One Piece" that I read a lot, and is used to describe land/dirt in a certain place. This place has myths about an area of endless vearth called "Fairy Vearth". Fairy --- Faerun. What does that have to do with elves and orcs? Nothing; I'm just crazy.

* * *

"_If you have the gift, something will happen. If not, nothing." --- Master Theobald, Raistlin Chronicles 1: The Soulforge._

---

I went livid. The wineglass dropped from my hand, caught by my bed where the contents soaked into the sheets. I stood up quickly and my right foot fell back a step. "_What!_ What are you trying to tell me!" I couldn't decide if I wanted to throw something, run away, or scream.

He looked up at me passively, as if what he just said was nothing of amazement. "You have no reason to overreact, Ives."

"Overreact! By the gods!" I yelled, shaking my head, eyes wide. "My magical, talking cat has just told me that he's an alien, and I'm overreacting!"

Raistlin didn't seem to know how to react to that comment, so he remained quiet and allowed me to get my outburst of disbelief to fizzle out on its own. He ended up having to wait for a few minutes, as I felt the need to rant on the absurdity he was suggesting I swallow.

"As long as you don't end up sucking out my brains through my nose for study, I suppose it doesn't change anything," I amended finally, sighing and plopping down on the bed, only to jump back up with a curse at the touch of the cold, wine-soaked sheets.

"Are you quite finished?" he mumbled irritably. Many of the things I said seemed to have at least annoyed him, if not confused him.

I frowned at the sheets before looking at him again. "So what, uh, _planet_ are you from?"

He took a moment before answering this. "A world called Krynn, on the continent of Ansalon."

"Hmm..." I never heard of it before. "Do you know the name of the star that it orbits?"

"Pardon?"

"You know, the Sun?" A long pause informed me. "Never mind. Well, you said that the first thing you remember is waking up in the shop, right? What's the last thing that you remember of your own world?"

An unusual, haunted look came to his eyes as they narrowed and fell to the floor. I felt some astonishment, and curiosity began to gnaw at my brain. He was hesitating, but if that question provoked such a look from _him_, then the answer must be something worth hearing.

But hearing the answer wasn't going to be that easy for me to get. "I do not wish to speak on it."

We were both silent for long moments after this, neither of us terribly sure about what we want to say, if we really wanted to say anything. Laughing, drunken voices floated down from down the hall and wafted into the room lazily. I felt somewhat disappointed, not to mention annoyed, recalling how much I looked forward to getting drunk earlier, and now I was merely sipping some wine with a cat, wine that had been wasted a bit into my bedclothes, while people proceeded loudly with their business.

The lack of words began to get oppressive, and I decided that I'd much rather be reading than be idle in an awkward silence, so I stood on my bed to reach the high shelf. I reached for a large, battered spellbook that I picked up at an estate sale several years back to study its contents and pulled it out. The thick, ragged cover on it caught on a different book, and as I pulled it out, this book came out with it. It fell and hit heavily onto the bed, startling me if nothing more than with its unexpectedness. I looked to see which one had fallen.

It was the purple one with the green binding.

And it was laying wide open.

My body was entirely arrested with irrational fear. I couldn't move; my arms shivered, my legs locked, my eyes widened. Raistlin seemed to think my behavior was odd as well, and quizzically approached to find the cause.

_No, stay back! You mustn't see the book!_ My mind shouted, but I could no way vocalize it.

He leaped onto the bed. I wanted to slap him away, throw him out of the room, never worry about an alien cat and his damn prodding again. But I would have been reluctant to, even if I wasn't seized with the very fear that fired that inclination.

His yellow eyes fell on the exposed pages. They scanned them, tried to take what they saw in, tried to analyze what they took in, but when he looked up at me, I saw a question. He hadn't been able to figure out the contents of the book.

As if suddenly released by an enchantment, I fell with my knees into the bed. My hands shakily shot forward, closed the book, and pulled it against my chest. The feeling as I held it against me wasn't as comforting as the feeling of a spellbook, emanating the residue power and personality of the wizard who wrote the spells within, warm and warn with years of study within it. It wasn't at all like the thick, roughened tome that I had intended to read, that now sat unattended beside me.

"I don't understand. What kind of book is that?" Raistlin demanded.

I opened my mouth to say something, but all that my contracted larynx could manage with my air, cut from my anxiety, was a squeak.

He came closer and sat before me, grimly postured, eyes straight on mine. "What kind of book is that?" he repeated. His tail whirled from behind him to coil before at his feet, brushing me as it did. The warm feeling of magic from within him touched me, and I instantly felt calmer. Raistlin suddenly didn't seem like an enemy, like an outsider. For a moment, I felt that he could understand.

"This is a book on techniques, meant to be memorized and practiced without the book, without components, with only yourself. It's something that should n-never be mixed with magic." My grip loosened. "I did once. After the last final, I was standing at the stairwell while we were drinking. I tried to cast a spell—nothing major, just a sleep spell I think—on another person in the party. I had drank enough to not get the spell right, and it didn't cast. I knew a technique from this"—I indicated the book—"that had similar results. So I tried doing that instead. I think I was out of components anyway.

"Next thing I knew, I was on the bottom of the flight of stairs. Quitha and Mabon said that I had collapsed and tumbled down them. They said that it had scared them, since I didn't respond at all for several minutes. However, other than a bump on the head and an ache from the residue of the combination, I was fine. The ache only lasted a few days, like soreness from working out, but I never combined the two again."

Raistlin's whiskers above his left eye raised. "I've never heard of something like this. And what is this power called, if it's not magic?"

"Psionics," I finally blurted with a stuttering hiss, "I practice psionics. It's not exactly forbidden in the academy, but relations with psions and wizards have never been good historically. It came from a misunderstanding on the part of the psionicists, who felt that magic was a crutch for the mind, labeling the study as pointless and those who studied weak. Some thought of this to an extreme, thinking that magic should be eradicated and magicians killed if necessary. Magic-users, in turn, didn't think too kindly on this and a rivalry was made, sometimes turning into bloodshed."

"Really? In what world's history did this occur?"

"Vearth's, about seven hundred or so years ago. There was always tension between psions and magic-users in Abeir-World, but psions were a minority, and since there were actually several psions in Indust-World... well, it's easy to see where tensions could rise. And since many scientists of Indust-World already didn't think much of psionics, academies that combine arts often leave it out."

He hummed in thought for a moment. "If what you say is true, then it's very strange that you should be willing to study both and not choose a preference."

"That's just it," I sighed and let a hand drop to stroke the large spellbook, "That's the thing that I'm really frightened to tell others, even though the psionics might get me kicked out. Something very personal."

I closed my eyes and gulped some air, as if getting prepared to be thrown into the ocean. "My magic is fading. Soon, I might... I might lose it."

I clutched on the psionics book against me with the arm that was still around it. My other hand recoiled from the spellbook uncomfortably, my teeth bit into my lip. I couldn't bring myself to open my eyes; I was certain that as soon as I did, tears would well up and spill out.

I heard Raistlin get up and come even closer. He stood almost against me, and I felt the contact of his fur, and his power, again. Instead of feeling warm, it felt like a burning iron, and I hissed, pulling away. Unfortunately, my eyes shot upon in the process, instinct telling me to make certain that it wasn't a hot iron, and my restored vision quickly blurred with water.

"I-I don't want to lose my... my magic, Raistlin. I fear that I... t-to wake up one day and... Damnit, I'd rather not wake up!" I should have felt foolish, to let myself be overcome with such emotion so quickly, and to give that cat another edge of amusement, but I was so overcome with anguish and fear—the kind of sobering feelings one might see when looking at their own mortality—that I couldn't bring myself to care if the feline scoffed at me or not. My hands finally covered my face as I began to sob, allowing the psionics book to drop from me.

I sat crying for a long while, so caught up in my personal grief that I didn't notice how much time had passed, or what Raistlin was doing. When my arms dropped to my sides in an exhausted motion, I looked around the room in a daze for him, passing my eyes over the clock and quietly cursing when I found that two hours had gone since I last looked at it. I contemplated if all that time was really wasted on tears when I felt something squirm over my legs.

Raistlin was laying in my lap, sleeping, shifting around his sleeping position from whatever dreams he was having. I smiled and petted him softly that I wouldn't wake him. He was often such a light sleeper that it's surprising that he didn't from that slight motion, but whatever dream he must have been having kept him in his contented state.

"Maybe you really _do_ understand, you extraterrestrial grimalkin," I muttered in low tones, still stroking his soft fur carefully. "I would like that... and if I can trust you, maybe you can trust me and tell me what you really are.

.-.-.

I, of course, didn't allow him to stay on my lap the entire night; I had no intention of sitting on my knees until dawn. He woke up on his own accord not long after I came to my senses and found himself a pillow more suitable for sleeping after I explained to him a few more of the mechanics behind psionics. During this conversation, he declared that he had not noticed any decrease in my magical power or ability since he'd known me; he even said that, if anything, I was _progressing_. I explained to him that it wasn't quite so easy to define as it seems on the surface, and how it seemed that, for the past several years, magic had been sifting from me, washed away with time like the weathering of stones.

He shook his head and made it clear that he didn't believe I was decreasing in power at all, but he did agree that if such a thing would happen, finding an alternative to fall back on was a wise decision. Then he had me perform several "tricks" with the psionics, small things that were still a little shaky from lack of practice ever since he came. Objects wobbly came to me from the other side of the room, lights appeared as I willed, but flickered with uneasy concentration and weren't as bright as any light I could summon with my magic.

But at least I no longer had a reason to not practice.

Despite all this, nothing really seemed to change in how Raistlin and I interacted. He still regarded me in the same aloof and superior manner that he did before, and I saw no reason to treat him any differently than I had been.

The next day, I grumbled a bit when I got out of bed, once again shaking away the weird residue left over from the dreams that I'd been having. Raistlin was still asleep, but I didn't need to make much noise before his eyes popped open and he stretched out his long body.

He assumed his normal posture. "Any plans for this evening, Ives?"

"Not really. I guess I could go ahead and buy the books for my classes next semester, but I really do hate going to the store, and I have plenty of time to get them. Do you have any suggestions?"

"I'm still not very acquainted with this city, but you've already chosen your classes?"

"Hmm? Oh yeah, I did that a week or so before finals. I thought I told you."

"I don't believe you did. What did you choose?"

I sighed and attempted to remember. "A writing class, another history class, two magic classes, something else... Uh, well, one of the magic classes is taught by Doctor Xavlia'rh, the other is Verobsance."

His whiskers lowered. "Verobsance, again. You certainly take quite a few classes under her tutelage."

I shrugged. "I don't see what's wrong with that. She's the head of the sorcery department and incredibly knowledgeable, despite that she's not that likable. I guess that comes with being the oldest one in the academy."

"Yes, the oldest, I've been meaning to ask you about that... She's human, isn't she?"

"Yes, she is."

"That's something that bothers me." His eyes narrowed. "There are elven professors here as well, and they aren't exactly young themselves."

"I always figured that it was because humans tend to spend their years differently than elves, who just kind of sit around, you know? I mean, everyone says that she's the oldest, including the elves here, and they don't mention her as being any strange creature or using her powers to extend her life or anything ridiculous like that." I gave a slight scoff at the notion, which was actually quite popular, especially among the non-magicians in the school. "You don't honestly think that she fits as that, do you?"

"If there's anything that I've learned, it's that even the most fantastic rumors and children's stories could have a vein of truth in it." This said, he didn't seem to have any more interest in this subject. "But we don't have any food, so if you're not going to go shopping, what do you suggest that we eat?"

I groaned, and wandered for a moment if I could get away with sleeping until dusk. "I guess we do have to leave the dormitory. If we're going shopping, I might as well get those bloody books, too. Let me see how much money I have."

* * *

As far as I know, there haven't been much in the way of psions in Dragonlance, and I, honestly, am only familiar with Forgotten Realms as a campaign setting in DnD. If I do something terribly against the books, point it out. 


	6. Traveller

Disclaimer: There is a chapter. It is chapter one. The first chapter. The one chapter TO RULE THEM ALL. Yes, I watched a leapfrog cartoon recently.

My lack of updates in this (and every other of my stories) can be attributed to my random running around and screaming in panic because I have 4 major papers to do by the end of this semester and I have to practice two instruments to play adequately enough to retain one of my majors. ((grumble…only non-writing-intensive class has the most fucking writing…grumble)). My fault for not explaining psionics fully in the last chapter, but it makes for some material to work with in this chapter. That will answer many of your questions.

Sera the Wicked: I don't see how morbid you can get. She already took a class in Necromancy _openly_. But, then again, I doubt they raise the dead every time they have a discussion.

Uncherished Light: As far as I know (and this is after reading 17 books), there's nothing in Dragonlance that is an equivalent to psionics. I will explain (eventually, of course) what last happened to Raistlin, and the same goes for Verobsance. I don't know when exactly these things will be uncovered, or perhaps even addressed again, but probably not too soon.

Rhetorical-Ducky: Heheh. That's the best description for psionics I've ever heard.

* * *

"_Darken Wood may appear different to different eyes." --- Tanis Half-Elven, Meetings Sextet 5: Steel and Stone._

---

The biting cold of the late year finally cut through the heat that rose from the cobblestone roads. This victory of the weather might have come in part from the gray clouds that managed to sufficiently blot out the winter sun, whose rays the cobblestone so easily soaked up. It had been cloudy almost all morning, much to my relief, and how the winds sliced between the folds of my robes and upturned the leaves on the trees that canopied the market sidewalks seemed to portend some heavier weather. _Perhaps it would snow this evening._

"Explain to me again some of the principles behind psionics," Raistlin said calmly from his walking position beside my shins.

"Mind your tongue!" I hissed at him with as low a voice I could manage without bending to speak to him. "Remember where you are! Such subjects aren't to be taken lightly."

There was a short, thoughtful silence before he spoke again. "Would it not be productive for a wizard to know a psion's craft in case she happens to come upon some in her travels?"

I looked down at him, a grudging smile of respect curling my lip. _Such tactful words_. "You have a point. If you must have it explained to you again, psionicists command energies and matter with their mind as how we mages do so with magic. They use their psychic powers to move objects, move between places, planes, and even times, and to control the minds of others. All of this is done strictly with the concentration of their minds, and they need no components—only their own energy. And they have the advantage of not having to prepare for specific 'powers' as we have to prepare for spells."

"A great advantage, indeed."

"But the energy that it drains from them is a staggering amount. Many of the less experienced ones can't handle pulling more than a few of their little tricks before they're spent." I shrugged, trying to give off an air of superiority over the subject. "They're more versatile, and they can wield large weapons and wear whatever armor they wish without fear of endangering their powers, but they are little against what a decent magic-user could cast."

Before I could ask him what might have prompted him to reiterate the explanation of psionics, a woman's scream shot out from ahead, and I was aware of a crowd gathering. Curiosity took me, and I found myself becoming another in the ring surrounding the commotion.

The woman was elven, a moon elf to be precise, and she had crumpled to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably and occasionally wailing. The woman wasn't from the city, as far as I could tell, and she even wore clothes that would mark her as an adventuring ranger, her longbow having fallen from where it had slung over her shoulder to the road. She covered her face with her hands and rocked back and forth over the cobblestone on her knees.

A man tried to approach her, but she whirled and forced him away, a desperate look on her face. "No! Don't touch me! It's all my fault!" Her eyes darted about wildly, and it was easy to see now that she was wounded and dirty, not to mention her face was drawn and tired.

"She's in a delirium," I commented. Raistlin gave a nod of agreement.

"How can I tell them?" she moaned, and she cradled her face again, but this time she passed out and crumbled pitifully to the ground. Two men, including the one that attempted to help her before, came to her side and lifted her over to carry her out of the road.

Someone in the group mumbled as the people dispersed, "She was with Sebaith and them that went to the _trans sylvan_ region."

"Probably the only survivor, poor thing."

I didn't leave the scene immediately. "Sebaith," I repeated.

"You know the name?" Raistlin said from below.

"Sebaith… Sebaith Rignlar. He was one of the students at the academy." I finally remembered. "He left a few months ago with some people he knew… I figured it was off adventuring. But the _trans sylvan_ region… I would never have guessed him to be so reckless." I hesitated a moment. "Come to think of it, I heard he had a fiancée that was a moon elf ranger. That was probably her."

"What happened with the rest of their party?"

"Dead, most likely." I shrugged. I didn't talk to Sebaith often, so the idea of his death didn't bother me much. "If they actually went to the _trans sylvan _region, then she's lucky to have survived at all. Oh,"—a thought came to mind—"you probably don't know about the _trans sylvan _region."

"I assume it's a dangerous area. The name sounds like its some sort of cursed wood."

"Astute observation," I said with a nod. "It is indeed a cursed wood, full of banshees and other elven undead. It used to be a fairly large gathering of elves in Abeir-World, but during the Gods' Impact, it suffered heavy loss and most of them died in the chaos while it clashed into a land from Indust-World. Legend goes, the land that it combined into with Indust-World was said to already be cursed. A lot of people call the region _trans sylvan_, but they call the crumbling remnants of the city the 'Ever Law Ruins'."

Raistlin gave a slight chuckle. I looked down at him. "What is it?"

"I can't help but think that your world isn't so different from mine," he said in a low, amused tone.

I frowned at him. "Not something that I would have known. You speak nothing of the world that you are from."

The rest of the day went uneventfully. I bought the required textbooks (which were no less expensive than they were the semester before) and set out to buy food and restock my material components. My wallet was in a sorry state in the aftermath, but at least the needs were over with, and the cool, shady day left mercy to my head and I didn't have to slink back into my room nursing a migraine.

At least, that's what I was thinking until I bashed right into a rushing Quitha.

I found myself on the road, shaking my head, while Buzz chirped, "I told you she was right around the corner. That didn't mean you had to speed up and crash into her like a runaway cart."

"Oh, geez, I'm so sorry Ives!" Quitha shouted, and quickly put out a hand and knelt to help me up. I waved away her hand and got up on my own accord, wondering if I should bother to berate her.

"Did you hear the news? About Sebaith?"

"I saw his fiancée collapsed in the road earlier," I replied coolly, "and guessed the rest."

"So you know that he's dead?"

I gave a nod and started to brush off any dirt that might have stuck to the seat of my green robes.

There was a pause. "You don't seem too upset about it."

I looked at her incredulously. "I'm sorry, but it's hard to feel sorry for a guy that you exchanged fifteen, maybe twenty words with, especially if he goes off to do something stupid like that. Adventuring at his young age…and into the _trans sylvan_ region no less!"

She frowned. "He was older than either of us."

"He was a full elf! If he was younger than us, he wouldn't even be old enough to start in the academy!"

Quitha seemed more and more disturbed. "You never seemed to care about what happened to adventurers. What if I go out and die while traveling? Would you act the same way?"

I raised a brow at her. Quitha was more defensive today than she usually was, but I figured that it had to do with her parents who, after all, met while they were adventuring. The story is funny as hell (and fully explaining Quitha's relative insanity), starting off with her father, an aristocratic sun elf, and her mother, a mercenary human, attempting to kill each other when they first met, and continued to quarrel after they were forced to work together. They get along now like kindred spirits, but every once in a while I'm treated to a couple's spat when visiting. Quitha's mother, even at her age, can still lift her father from the ground.

"Look," I sought to be diplomatic, "There's no reason to argue about it. People that die while adventuring know of the risks. That's why they must be prepared… and going out so young to such a place is foolhardy. Even experienced adventurers know to avoid that place if possible. You see what I mean?"

Her face crumpled in thought for a moment, but she closed her eyes to the tension and gave a nod. "Yeah. I get it." Then her face brightened up. "Besides, that's just how you are, isn't it, Ives?"

I laughed and looked at her awkwardly. "Why should my attitude come into inspection in this conversation? Are you going back to the academy, too?"

"Yup, I finished all my errands."

"Want to walk with us?"

Buzz flapped his wings and looked over to Raistlin, crowing, "Have you been fed yet?"

The cat looked back up at him, his white teeth bearing slightly as he raised his whiskers. "We've been out foraging."

I chuckled and looked down at him. "Raistlin."

"I'd fly away before you'd get close to me!" He started to dance upon Quitha's shoulder and sing a mocking child's song.

But Raistlin was quick with a retort. "Then maybe I'll steal your meal instead."

Buzz shrieked and stopped his dance, flapping his wings about wildly (and smacking his master in the face). "My meal? You wouldn't dare!" Then he groomed the feathers under his wing smugly and added, "I'm eating grubs tonight, anyway."

I rolled my eyes with a grin. "The conversations that occur… gods!"

"Oh, Ives," Quitha cut in, "What are you doing for the break until classes start again? Going back to see your folks?"

I shot her a look of disbelief at the notion, then quickly rectified it and simply shook my head. "Not this time."

"Eh? Really? Do you ever go see your parents?"

I shrugged, not really offering an answer and hoping that it was a sufficient answer to prod her into another vein of conversation. It worked easily, and she popped easily to the classes we signed up for next semester. As it turned out, we had the Verobsance class in common, much to Raistlin's apparent dismay.

.-.-.

I jumped on Raistlin when we came back to the privacy of my room before he could attempt to ask a question or give a comment. "Why don't you tell me some more about that world you're from… Krynn, was it?"

His eyes narrowed and he found a spot to settle himself before the stare became something of a sneer. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Nothing." I grinned. "And everything."

He seemed unamused by the comment and his glare stayed cold onto me as I sat down and began practicing various psionic exercises, occasionally glancing over to see if his expression had changed.

His whiskers were set, his eyes were solid, and his jaw looked firm. _He's being defensive today, too,_ I mused to myself.

I looked fully into the dancing lights I was making, saying in an intentionally annoying sing-song voice, "You're not talking!"

Raistlin's agitation was so thick, I could feel it wafting from his small form as though it was tangible. "You ask me to explain an entire world. In no light is that demand unreasonable."

"Well, I have all of the break to waste, so you can prattle on as much as you want about it."

The next moment of silence seemed to exhibit just how much he would want to "prattle" about it.

"How about yourself?" I mused, now making effort to sound nonchalant (and thus taking some concentration from the lights, causing them to waver and blink in and out). "I really don't know anything about you other than the fact that you're from a world called Krynn… though I'd wager that your… _home world_… was a lot like Abeir-World.

"And I'd wager you weren't a cat, either."

He obviously didn't like the questions he was being asked, or any of the observations I was giving. Any person with lesser control of themselves might have lunged at me for all the anger I was building up into Raistlin using just a few words. I was growing amused by how easily I had gained an upper hand in the discussion when he spoke a question of his own.

"Why do you not visit your parents?"

The lights completely blanked out, and I shot a look to him before I could catch myself. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"It only seems fair that we exchange histories, doesn't it?" he mused, instantly regaining his cool and his haughtiness, "I have all the time in the world. How about adventurers? Why do you seem so cool about them?"

In just a few words, the tables had turned, and I sneered openly at him. I might have slapped him for his attitude. "What do you care about my feelings for adventurers? And what difference to they make to me? I'm a student, with too many things on my mind to care about random groups of people walking into dangerous places and never coming out again." I whirled around, away from his stare, determined not to let him gain anymore of the upperhand.

Lights flickered before me again, and I continued with my psionics exercises.

.-.-.

I worked almost all my energy into my training and study in effort to keep out of any more conversation with Raistlin. When I could finally do no more, I nearly fell into my bed, letting the softness of the bed overtake me, and blackness took over my senses, and I was in a dreamless sleep.

Several hours later, the softness evaporated as something blunt and unwelcome poked me in the side.

Out of my mouth came some sort of muttering, and, without opening my eyes, I turned on my side against the wall, pulling the blanket tightly over me. After a pause, the poking resumed, this time in the small of my back.

"Go away, Caramon," I murmured sullenly. It didn't yet occur to me that I knew no one by that name.

_Poke, poke._

_Slowly, I faced the obnoxious intrusion, still more than half asleep, my eyes bleary._

_Oh. My eyes opened with mild surprise as I made out the diminutive form of, not Caramon, but Raistlin. Thin and pale, an oval face framed by wisps of light brown hair, the four-year-old was standing at the edge of the bed. He was smiling mysteriously. Smiling was out of the ordinary for Raistlin, an unusually preoccupied little boy._

_"I woke up early…" he began reedily._

_"Uh-huh." By now I was unfortunately wide-eyed and knew that I was not going to be able to steal any more sleep. I propped myself up on one elbow and regarded my odd little brother—_since when did I have a little brother?—_whom I loved enough, yet would just as soon strangle breathless some days—no most days, particularly right now._

_A glance downstairs told me that his more high-spirited brother, Caramon, was still fast asleep, lying on his back, his toes pointed in the air, snoring lightly. The twins had small beds along side each other, but Caramon was usually sprawled at an angle over both of them. I knew Caramon had been up late the night before, practicing, under Gilon's tutelage, how to whittle. He was applying his newfound expertise to creating his first wooden dagger._

_As was his wont, Raistlin had gone to bed shortly after supper, and I must have fallen asleep in front of the smoldering fire—_there is no fireplace in the dormitories_. Good, reliable Gilon probably lifted me up the ladder and into bed._

_I sighed. How early was it anyway?_

_Poke, poke._

_"Will you stop that, Raist?"_

_He still had that vague smile. What was he so smiley about today?_

_"I was saying," he said unnecessarily, now that he had renewed my attention, "a bird was talking to me…"_

_I lifted one eyebrow suspiciously. The story did not seem very likely—_wait, what about Buzz?—_but with Raistlin, you never could be sure. The child had a peculiarity about him, a singularity. Since he didn't talk much to other children, he might as well talk to birds. But did birds talk back to him? What birds were there anyway, this time of year, in Solace? _Solace?

_"What kind of bird?" I asked in exasperation._

_"Brown bird," replied Raistlin, shrugging as if this was unimportant information. "Wings got white tips," he said, almost as an afterthought. "Just passing through on its way somewhere else."_

_"Well. What did the brown bird say?" I persisted, beginning to roll into a sitting position._

_"Said it was going to be an extra-special day."_

_"Oh," I said, unimpressed. "Extra-special good, or extra-special bad?"_

_"Hmm," Raistlin said thoughtfully. "Probably good. He sounded happy." I began to put on my boots. "Of course with brown birds," he added authoritatively, "you never know. They think every day's special. It doesn't take much to convince them."_

_"Optimists," I said drily._

_"Uh-huh," Raistlin agreed._

_I stopped and gave him an appraising look. His expression was certainly ingenuous, almost angelic. Well, Raistlin was the imaginative twin._

_I yawned as I grabbed a tunic and pulled it over my head. I began to think over how things have been while I dressed, shaking my head and scoffing to myself at some of the thoughts. Then it came to me._

_"A bird!" I exclaimed, and I looked again at Raistlin, who was peering at me from atop the ladder, as if trying to discern my thoughts. I reached over and cuffed him affectionately on the ear. "You were talking to a bird! That means…"_

_I lunged past him and hurtled down to the ground floor. Crossing the room, I threw one of the shutters open. Sunshine streamed through the window._

_Spring! _Did it not just turn winter?_ Sunshine, blue sky, fragrant air—and yes, birds, birds everywhere._

_"Spring!" I leaned contentedly on the narrow sill._

_"That's what I've been trying to tell you," said Raistlin earnestly, following me. "What do you think I was talking about?"_

.-.-.

My eyes flew open with a curse already on my lips. "Mabon! What in the planes of torture are you doing? Put me down this instant!"

My large, half-orcan friend grinned at me. "Oh, you finally woke up. You talk in your sleep, Ives."

I squirmed, attempting to get out of his arms. He kept his hold well on me, and all I succeeded in doing was jabbing myself with the wooden box he had slung over his shoulder with a leather strap, the thing that had been poking me in my dream. The box, I learned soon after, held my possessions.

I growled and stopped struggling. "Can you at least tell me why I'm being carried from my room? Where are we, anyway?"

He smiled wider, his big, stark-white teeth almost glaring at me. "Quitha and I thought that you needed to be taken out on a vacation since you never seem to leave the dormitories, so we conspired to kidnap you and go out somewhere together. We're on the way to the train station outside of town. Quitha's already there waiting for us."

"And how did you manage to get into my room? You know that casting Knock on student doors is against the rules."

"Oh, we had a little help." He motioned down to the ground beside him, and I squirmed around to see.

Raistlin looked back up to me, his whiskers tilted in a way to look like a smirk. "They mean well, after all, and you really should relax." The amused tone in his voice told that my welfare was the least of his concerns.

"Damn you, you treacherous little grimalkin!" I spat, "I'll pull out your whiskers one by one, shave your fur, and paint you pink when I get a hold of you! One sight of a bald, pink, talking cat, and the train conductor will have a heart attack. Then I'll tie you to his body and throw the both of you out the caboose!"

* * *

That dream sequence came almost directly from Dark Heart, another book in the Meetings Sextet.  
By the way! I have drawn Quitha (and her familiar Buzz) and posted her picture on my deviant art site. I would supply the address here, but FF-net dislikes having URLs in the stories. But I do suggest looking. My deviant art username is the same as my FF-net one. 


	7. Claripost

Disclaimer: Chapater one. Yes, I know that's misspelled. Misspelling is not a crime, even in legal documents. They just find it lazy.

All this contemplation on the character of Verobsance is so _very_ amusing to me, and not only because I'm the single person who knows who she is. I find it intriguing that a character of my story (one that may or may not be a character from DL) has gained so much attention.

* * *

"_Pulleyscablessteam. Updownupdown. Whatfloor? Steptotherear. Capacity:thirtytwo. Stuck? Alarms! Bellswhistleshorns." --- Gnimsh, Legends 2: War of the Twins._

---

Raistlin smugly looked at me from the other side of the booth-like compartment, sitting tall and stark black against the bright, turquoise-green cushioned seat.

I sneered back at him, my arms crossed tensely. "You are so damned lucky that they had no pink paint on the train," I growled. Half of my anger at my friends and my situation was acted; much of my anger was deflated previously upon seeing the train steward's face when I asked for the paint earlier, but I wanted them all to take in deeply how much I didn't appreciate their shanghaiing me away from my dormitory. Furthermore, with how everything was going, what little I was able to remember of the dream was falling away, and I could no longer recall any of it.

Quitha and Mabon, however, were taking my ire-filled lashings with a smile. They went on, instead, on how lovely the place we were going to—Claripost—is during this time of year with how the waterfalls react to the cold weather, creating beautiful ice structures, yadda yadda… After a good meal by their treat, I allowed myself to be placated and started to enjoy the beginnings of this haphazard journey. I found myself actually looking forward to the waterfalls of Claripost and the clear, calm ponds and lakes that surrounded its many rivers and streams, each body dotted with islands of various sizes.

Both Raistlin and I had taken our seats by the window, a move allowed by Quitha and Mabon in their attempts to appease me. When a time of silence came, he spoke up again. "So, how does the 'train' work?"

I smiled. The question was almost childish, one that a curious child would ask their parents, along with "Why is the sky blue?" Raistlin was prone to ask such questions, but he was also one that expected, and received, the answers. I wouldn't doubt that he knew exactly why the sky was blue. In such, though 'how a train works' isn't exactly common knowledge, I found the explanation coming to my lips almost involuntarily.

"This is a classic steam-run train. The locomotive in the front of the train has a firebox surrounded by a water jacket. The firebox has a flame in it that must be tended to constantly, which evaporates the water in the water jacket into steam. Pipes collect the steam and transfer it to the steam chest and cylinders. Here, the steam forces the piston to move, which turns the wheels, and at the end of this 'stroke', the steam enters through the opposite end and forces the piston to move back. The exhausted steam barrels out of the pillar. The power made from the steam moving the wheels is enough to transfer to the rest of the train behind it, allowing the entire train to drag along the rails."

My glib answer brought a nod of thoughtful contemplation from the cat, but bewildered stares from my friends.

"How did you know all that about trains?" Mabon asked.

"Oh." I straightened up and looked at them, almost as surprised by the allocution as they were. "Well… Nobgel was really into trains and talked about them a lot… he even worked on maintenance for this train back at the station in town while he still went to the Academy, and he had a miniature train-set in his dormitory cubicle."

The two snickered, and Buzz stifled an amused crow. This didn't get past Raistlin, who looked back at us with the set of whiskers over his right eye raised in confusion. "Who is Nobgel?"

I sighed. "Nobgel is one of the Dufflerock Brothers: Nobgel, Ningel, and Ninmadge Dufflerock. They used to go to the Academy before they graduated last year. Each of them went to the Academy for different things; Nobgel's expertise was in Mechanical Engineering, Ningel's Bardic Music, and Ninmadge's Illusionist Magic."

"And Ives dated them," Mabon quickly added with a wide grin. Quitha giggled.

Raistlin paused for a moment. "At the same time?"

"The Dufflerock Brothers were just _friends_ of mine." I cast a sharp glare at the two, who, considering how my mood has been, quickly iced over their amusement. "I was friends with them since way before I started at the Academy. We came from the same village. I would sometimes have a bet with one of them and often, if I lost, their price would be a date." I glanced back at the two for a moment, making sure that they were quieted. I had already explained this to them more than once. "It was never anything serious; I think they just knew that it would get on my nerves, especially with these two hanging nearby."

"I don't understand… they would make you date them as payment for bets because it _annoyed_ you? Why would it annoy you?" Raistlin pressed.

"Because they were gnomes," Buzz chirped in.

The bird earned four sets of eyes staring on him. Quitha and Mabon, in shock and fear that he might have crossed the line to put me in an ire again, me, in that ire from having that line crossed, and Raistlin, from a surprise that quickly turned into hilarity.

In fact, the cat nearly fell over laughing.

I rose, spouting curses left and right. Mabon at once set about attempting to calm me while Quitha scolded Buzz, who defended himself in saying that it was the truth and that Raistlin would find out anyway. His argument would have been accepted if he didn't follow with, "At least I didn't mention Nalsen, since he _did_ ask if she dated them at the same time."

"N-nalsen?" the feline managed to ask, weak from laughter.

Quitha answered without thinking, her characteristic blindness prompting the words before her intelligence could stop her, "Once Ives had lost a bet with all three of them and she had to date 'Nalsen'. Nalsen is all three of them. You see, sometimes the Dufflerocks would get on each other's shoulders and, with some of Ninmadge's illusion magic, make themselves look like one, very tall…"

The rest of her answer was drowned out by Raistlin's guffaw and my swearing. This time, he actually did fall over, and the noise was enough to gain the attention of a stewardess. She had thought that Raistlin's loud and unusual laughter was due to a casting of a Tasha's Hideous Laughter spell (especially upon seeing that the one laughing was a cat) and proceeded to remind us that use of magic is prohibited even on the steam engine while it is in motion, all while we attempted to explain (with little result, considering we were three mages and two talking animals) that no magic of any sort was involved in this instance.

.-.-.

I was the first one off the train, trying to make as much distance between my comrades and myself as possible. After seeing the normally ill-humored cat be reduced to a quivering, furry form of chuckles because of a subject I already had to constantly argue about with my friends, not to mention how much attention it got from the rest of the passengers and the train staff, any good spirits that I might have gained on the trip had been lost, and I made myself almost inapproachable through the rest of the ride.

But when I came to the edge of the platform, I stopped dead in my tracks.

Claripost was indeed beautiful this time of year, with the light playing off the large icicles of water frozen in its fall off the rocks. Rushing water still ran around these cold forms and into the rushing rivers below, the moving water creating a mist in the winter cold that surrounded the area. The mist quieted its surroundings, making it seem like an entirely different world, and though there were many people here, all that one could really hear was the sound of the water.

The others must have caught up with me quickly, but I didn't notice their presence until Mabon finally asked, "Well, Ives? What do you think?"

"Marvelous," I breathed, not taking my eyes off the scene once.

Claripost owes its existence completely to the Gods' Impact. In Abeir-World, it was a kind of freshwater wetlands, filled with various kinds of bodies of water and almost impassable, so it was naturally avoided. In Indust-World, it was a mountainous area, with some rivers and runnels of cold water, but was impractical for habitation. The Gods' Impact thrashed the two together in such a way that broken stone overtook the marshes. It evened out during the period of "Settling" that followed the impact, creating a tranquil environment that was as carefully balanced as it was random, as natural as it was unnatural.

The result of the "perfectly broken" landscape was a multitude of rivers and lakes of various sizes. Some lakes had whirlpools while others were so calm that the surface looked like a pane of glass. Some rivers ran smoothly and uninterrupted while others became waterfalls that fell off the split cliffs. But, perhaps most importantly, the vast quantity of freshwater was so incredibly clear due to the natural "spring water" underground filtering system from the mountains from Indust-World, which ended up getting an addition from the marshy soil from Abeir-World, making a new system that collected a great amount of water that it would purify.

In fact, I was so entranced by the spectacle that I was in my room at the inn scarcely long enough to collect my key, put down my things, and put some food we brought in a cloth when I went right back out to wander around. Quitha and Mabon saw how much I was engrossed into the place (which was more than they, even though it was their idea), and chose to leave me to my own thoughts. Raistlin, however, did follow.

I jumped from rock to rock to cross a stream and made my way towards a walkway that led up the cliffs. Raistlin had already almost lost me once in the thick fog, so he was practically on my heels as I went through, obviously not liking the quick pace but too proud to say anything against it. He nearly crashed into me several times while I hopped along the rocks, and, as I went up the walkway, tried in vain to keep his exhausted pants from being heard.

The cliff was a long way up and quite steep, so even with a walkway, it was like hiking up a mountain. I tired myself out about half the way and decided to rest, sitting on a rock and breathed deeply, the combination of the cold air and the altitude getting to me. Raistlin crumpled down to the ground with a thankful sigh.

"Don't fall asleep. This is only a break," I said.

Raistlin managed a _humph_. "I have no intention of doing so."

"Right. It's just that most cats tend to nap a lot, you know, especially when they're tired."

"And you know very well that I'm not like 'most cats'." He retorted. However, he dropped this immediately for another subject. "Why are you so incessant on getting to the top? Quitha and Mabon said that we'll be here in Claripost for several days, or longer if you like."

I shifted my position a bit and pointed out to a small land-ledge island at the very edge of a waterfall. "See that island? I want to go there. As soon as possible."

"But why?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, really, but as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to get there."

Raistlin stared at it, trying to study it as best as he could without getting up from his reclining position. "It looks stable enough, but most people wouldn't like the idea of standing on a landmass the size of a small room that happens to overlook the surrounding waterfall as it plummets down several hundred feet, especially considering the cold must have made some slick ice upon it."

"I bet the view is beautiful, though." I mused on it for a moment. "You know, people used to think that mist like this creates entryways between the planes, particularly between the planes of the living and of the dead. Some people still think it, I guess, but it was a very popular myth in Indust-World. They thought that places with lots of mist or steam or volcanic activity were entryways into the Underworld. I think there were some planewalkers from Abeir-World that specialized in such things and still do. I don't know how true it is, though; I haven't had classes in planewalking yet."

"It's unusual for you to be so…_possessed_ by anything," he continued, "You have a fey look about you."

With that, I realized how childish I must have seemed, and I grinned sheepishly, self-conscious. "I know it's weird but, I didn't think I would be so taken by this place when you guys dragged me over here. I was so caught up with just being pushed around against my will. But now that I'm here, I can't say that I've ever felt so _charged_." I shook my head. "You probably think its silly."

"Actually, I share in your sentiments," he said with a shrug. I raised my brow at this, but he offered nothing more, more inclined to get as much relaxation from the break as possible.

The reprise was short, and I soon had us trekking up the second half of the walk. This half seemed to take longer, and likely did since the thin, chilled air was probably slowing us down, but at least the weather kept us from getting hot and sweaty by the time we reached the top.

One had to walk across several bridges and larger islands before they could reach that small island I had chosen, but a horizontal walk wasn't nearly as bad as the vertical one we had just taken, so that part of the walk was almost too trivial to mention, at least in terms of effort. But it was certainly scenic, since the larger islands had its own vegetation, and the play of ice that hung on their branches that came from the surrounding rushing water and mist was majestic in itself.

And the walk was certainly worth it.

By the time we got there, it was afternoon, and the sun would begin to get low soon. I sat down and looked out over the view, making it clear that I wanted to watch the water run past and fall, watch the mist waft past the lakes and streams below, and watch the sun drop into the horizon. Raistlin offered no resistance and sat as well. I pulled out the cloth of food and offered over small portions to the cat as I ate. It was a small meal (by my standards, not the cat's), but I was content with just a little cheese and bread as I looked upon the sinking sun and the swirling colors mixing in with the clouds and mist, reflecting off the waters.

.-.-.

An appetizing smell stirred my inadequately-filled stomach and I awoke in darkness, finding myself still propped up against a large stone. I was stunned in confusion of where I had just awoken when I saw the view of the nightscape from the island, just as breathtaking as the view of the sunset. I discerned where I was regardless and looked about myself. "Raistlin?"

A short search brought me to see two golden eyes, staring straight back at me. It took me a while to discern Raistlin's black shape in the darkness. "Do you smell that?"

I inhaled the air again, finding a most delicious aroma of spices mingled in with the clean, water-carried breeze. "What is that?"

"It smells like…" Raistlin's whispering voice trailed off, and I saw him blink, then his eyes move, his form still hard to see in detail except that I could tell that he was moving.

"Wait!" I cried, and I hurriedly packed up the food cloth and chased after him as he went towards the bridge to the island beside this one. The darkness and the mist, however, were against me, not to mention that the vegetation of the islands didn't help by creating brush and looming shadows to add to the difficulties, and I soon lost track of him.

"_Raistlin! Where are you!_"

* * *

Why did I have to mention food? I'm _already_ hungry, damnit, and I'm not going to dinner for another 20 minutes… 


	8. Lost in the Mist

Disclaimer: The Chapter of One.

I continue to wonder what possessed me to make this thing not only in first person, but first person in the perspective of an OC. Oh well, best to just go with it.  
Tiernan Hunter: Don't worry; I'm not going to kill or otherwise destroy the one character that keeps this story dignified as fanfiction… at least for a while.  
Ghouzi Ngan: Oh lord, no. I don't know how long precisely it's going to be till I end this, but I don't forsee it being quite that soon. Thank you very much for the compliments to my writing, though.  
This chapter is going to be a little shorter than most.

* * *

"_This is Foghaven Vale. Long years ago, before the Cataclysm, it was one of the most beautiful places upon Krynn…" --- Silvara, Chronicles 2: Dragons of Winter Night._

---

I stumbled blindly in the darkness for a while, slipping on patches of ice and running into various rocks and foliage, until my confused and tired brain came to realize the real danger of doing so. And when it struck, my body froze, as though it might as well have been one of the ice-covered trees that surrounded me. I wasn't in total darkness, since the Sister was shining bright that night, but the play of moonbeams through the tree branches and the thick fog was, if anything, more disorienting than being surrounded by thick blackness. The breeze carried from the falls continued to churn the mist and sway the trees, making the beams dance and jerk around me.

"Raistlin?" I called again. I hoped to see the glitter of his golden eyes, or his black form that seemed deeper than night lurking about, but I could find no sign of him. Even the delicious aroma from before had disappeared. "Raistlin? Damnit, this isn't funny!"

I heard more creaks from the boughs of the trees around me. At times, I thought something was climbing the tree, and I whirled about, hoping to see the cat, but could find nothing. Other times, the groans of wood seemed more like someone walking on floorboards around me, above me, _below_ me…

I shivered, and then realized how cold I had become. Wind and dampness was assaulting all sides, and the clinging mist wasn't helping by any means. I forced myself to sit down and pull my robes tighter around me, forcing a scoff at my own anxiety.

"I'm just scaring myself. The trees are creaking from the winds and the weight of the ice on them," I grumbled, as if impatient with my fear, "And Raistlin will be fine. He's a smart cat. And dawn can't be _too_ far away, really. When the sun rises, getting down and back to the hotel will be easy."

The sound of my own voice seemed to calm me down a bit, and I wriggled some more in my own rising warmth within my robes. "Quitha and Mabon are probably worried, but that's how they always are! It will only take a few words… By the planes of torture, if they really got worried, they would've sent Buzz to find me by now."

Then, I would have sworn that I heard children laughing. Any self-assurance that I had gained up to that point dropped and shattered, and I was back to the beginning, letting myself get frightened out of my mind. The mist seemed to have been growing thicker, and the play of the Sister's light teased me further, making it seem that figures walked in the shadows.

I no longer tried talking to calm myself down. To be honest, I was afraid to talk. I felt like I was intruding upon beings that I had no right intruding upon, and I did not want to learn what would happen if they had found me. But there was still the matter of Raistlin, and, despite my own argument that he would be fine, I still somehow thought that the mist would somehow take him away. Times after, I concluded that the wild notion of Raistlin disappearing in the mist forever was the delusions of a mind confused with lack of proper sleep and food, and that I had let my perceptions get whittled down by fear and overwhelmed by all that was happening around me. But, more dreadful than the fear for my own well-being, I feared never seeing that acerbic little grimalkin again.

"Raistlin!" I shouted again, this time my fears coming into my voice, making the yell that much more audible and shaky, "Come here! Please! Raistlin!"

My last shout made an eerie echo that arrested my voice for a bit, long enough to see that my surroundings had, apparently, changed again. I heard increasingly more sounds of feet walking across the stone that made up most of the ground of whatever island I was on. My earlier words of the superstitions surrounding mist rose up in my mind.

A loud creak of the boughs right above my head nearly made me jump, followed by (and I swear upon my mother's grave I heard this) a deep, manly voice calling out, "Who's there?"

I flattened myself against the ground below me, no longer caring how cold I became, and stared upwards. Of course, I saw nothing, but finding nothing visible to affirm what I heard did not help my wits the least bit.

"Maybe I _did_ end up walking into another plane," I mumbled softly to myself. At the moment, I couldn't think of how plausible or implausible the statement was, but it was preferable to thinking that ghosts surrounded me.

Then I heard a low, catlike grumble, and my stretched mind took the possibility that it was from Raistlin, despite that it was far too deep, so I scrambled forward, calling for him.

Eyes appeared in the darkness to greet me. Cat eyes indeed, with great intelligence at that, but I saw eyes of green, far too large to belong to my small cat.

A white tiger stepped out into my sight.

I couldn't even shriek, but I did seem to hold enough sense to scramble back a foot or two before my limbs locked up with the fear.

A woman stepped up to join at the tiger's side, looking about curiously, though I came to the realization that she wasn't "seeing" while she turned her head, that this was a habit that one who once had sight would still indulge in. This woman was blind, I knew somehow.

Her pale skin, black hair with silver netting, white, chiffon-like robes… she certainly looked like something that would step out of these mists, moonbeams, and shadows that surrounded me. But she seemed oddly familiar, and I felt that I've met her somehow before. Then I remembered the dream where I looked for the Sister, when people kept interrupting my search, people whose names I could not remember, though their names would swirl endlessly in my head throughout the dream.

This woman was one of them. She was the one that confused me the most in the dream, the one I ended up trying to find in a temple the morning after the dream. This woman seemed obviously to be some sort of priestess or cleric, but I still could not grasp her name, so instead, I looked up through the bows of the trees, trying to find the Sister in my dream.

I found a moon, but its white surface did not have the jagged mark of the Sister. I shivered. "Where am I? Am I even on Vearth anymore?"

The woman somehow heard my raspy declaration, and her sightless eyes shot towards me, obviously troubled. But when she spoke, her voice was smooth and kind. "Miss? Are you lost?"

"I lost my cat," my mouth blabbed before I could think of a thing to say, immediately seeing how childish the words sounded.

She smiled, looking slightly confused but fairly relieved. "What is your cat's name?"

I slowly rose, now fairly confident that the tiger wasn't going to eat me. "Raistlin… He's, ah, a black cat…"

A disturbed look came back upon her face. "Raistlin…" she repeated, so low, I more read it on her lips than heard it.

All at once, my mind came to a wild conclusion, that I had come to a different world… that I had come to _Raistlin's_ world, and I found myself running away from this woman and her cat, and it didn't take long for me to trip over something and fall back to the ground. I looked behind me, and saw that the woman was gone. I looked above me, and I saw that the Sister had come back.

I breathed a sigh, no longer hearing strange footsteps or creaks (or, at least, imagining that I heard such things), and the shadows and mist suddenly didn't seem so strange and intimidating anymore. I still had a problem, however. I had no idea where I, or Raistlin, was, and I couldn't very well go back to the hotel and hope for the best. For one, I don't know if Raistlin's coat is thick enough to handle the cold, so I couldn't very well leave him. Secondly, stumbling around in the darkness on an icy island in the middle of rushing waters that fly off a cliff as a waterfall in attempt to get back to shore was obviously not the best of ideas.

First, I was going to need some light. Now thinking clearly, my mind not muddled with irrational fear, I went through my options. I didn't exactly bring a torch with me, and I didn't have a firefly or any phosphorescent moss (the required spell component) for a light spell. I cursed lightly a moment, a bit angry with myself that I never bothered to learn how to cast spells without these components. And even if I had any experience in wood lore, there would be no way to make one of these icy branches into a temporary torch.

My only option was psionics. However, I didn't do much with light in the discipline outside of simple tricks and illusions. But there were two psychokenetic powers that I knew would do the job in this situation: Control Light and My Light. Though Control Light might be useful in finding Raistlin, it would do me little good if I left the area, plus I barely knew how to perform that power at all. But I actually read in about My Light, though I never tried it, so that turned into being my only option.

I concentrated carefully on my eyes, and, soon, a light hum came to my ears, and I could suddenly see about me as I could see normally in the day. My Light, essentially, is supposed to act like an electric torch, giving a twenty-foot cone of light, except this light is psionic in nature and comes directly from my eyes. A nifty power, one that I was, at the moment, _very_ glad I could do.

I looked around the islands for maybe an hour, draining all of my energy with the psionics in the process. It came to the point that I'd either have to stop, or collapse where I stood, and since it looked like daybreak was coming, I chose to stop.

I was, however, still very tired from the searching, and it didn't take much to knock me out. In fact, it only took a small, flying body, launched from Moradin knows where for what reason, that collided with my back and whacked me, face first, into a tree.

* * *

An odd way to end a chapter, I agree, but this cutoff is important. 


	9. Kender on Caffeine

Disclaimer: 1st chapter.

Before you guys start screaming about how long it's been since my last update, let me tell you something: Full-time college student, had a full-time job at a factory, and lack of DL books during the semester since I left them at my parents' house.  
But I gave you guys a little treat in this chapter to make up for it: an incredibly (un)subtle hint as to what Raist was doing before he woke up in a pet shop wearing a fur coat.  
I suppose I should have been clearer about Crysania disappearing. It was a terrible, one paragraph transition anyway. After looking over it the umpteenth time, I nearly fooled myself in to thinking I never wrote her leaving, which confused me to no end since I swore I wrote something.  
She-Magus: Arrest the tree! Obstructing the crazy original characters! That's the charge!  
Tiernan Hunter: "Yet" as in I've _no_ plans of killing off Raist, but I can't speak for my malicious behavior in the distant future.  
Uncherished Light: I am tempted to draw that picture, now, as it amuses me, too, but I doubt I'd ever have that happen in the story.  
Kaisa Del'Armago: Thanks, but I think I might be all right. Since then, I've familiarized myself in Psionics and even made a Psion for a campaign (the psion is, incidentally, a kender). But, _please do _point out any discrepancies you see.  
sagewolf: Spoilers are a mother, aren't they? But, yes, that is Solinari.  
Natada Ainthe: I need no interplanar teleportation to make a plot twist! Of course, I'm going to use one anyway… but not in the way you're thinking, so I can still kinda gloat.

* * *

_"Maybe you could turn me into a cat instead? I've never been a cat…" --- Tasslehoff Burrfoot, Dragons of Summer Flame._

---

Even though I was out cold, I was vaguely aware of a small body—likely whatever had_catapulted_ into me and knocked me out—squirming and struggling at my back for what seemed like an hour. Then, it suddenly lifted itself up, and I could almost hear the voice of this person, but he seemed far away and I couldn't understand him, and he talked for what seemed like several hours.

The whole time between getting knocked out and being revived was probably no more than seven minutes, but the small being seemed as anxious as though it might as well have been hours. I was finally brought to when the person ran off and came back (it sounded like I could hear him running for miles in the state I was in), likely retrieving a cup filled with waterfall, and icy water was splashed onto my face.

I came out of it with a start, not at all liking cold water smacked into my face while I was already pretty cold from being up here at winter. But I was conscious, alert, and at least sane enough to know it. I stood straight up at such a speed that I nearly made myself fall back down, and I was dazed for a second before I thought to look at the person before me.

Then I cocked my head, more than a little confused.

My absolute first guess, if you asked me what race this person was, was that he was part halfling, part elf… and more than likely some sort of fairy or nymph somehow in the mix. Then I thought he might be a particularly mischievous-looking half-elf child, but the wrinkles in his face countered that pretty easily. Plus, I couldn't place what kind of place he'd be from with those clothes. Bright green leggings, his hair set in a ponytail on top of his head…

For a moment, I wondered if a joke was being played on me, by Quitha or Mabon, or, most likely, Raistlin.

"Are you okay?" He asked, seeming genuinely concerned, "I really didn't mean to slam into you like that. You see, I was looking at this very interesting catapult a gnome was showing off. It wasn't like all the other catapults I've seen gnomes make; part of it was in the ground in a hole dug especially for it. Or maybe it was built inside the hole… I'm not entirely sure. And he had something magical on it. Actually, he had several magical things on it, with dials and buttons and gems all over the place. That was all to make very specific cal-cu-lations to travel through areas no one has ever even dreamed of, or something like that. Of course, when the gnome was showing it at first, it wasn't working very well. Almost everything he launched hit the wall of the hole. But he kept reworking it and 'tweaking' it, and putting dirt into the hole, and then he asked me to try it out first after he finished since I'd been helping him and he was very appreciative of it, and then—"

"Hold!" I shot up my hands. It would figure that he actually _was_ catapulted into me, knowing my luck. But I paid it no mind and tried to remember what he was trying to tell me in the first place, before he could start again… Oh yes, he was giving an _apology_. "It's really no problem. I probably wouldn't have even gotten knocked out if I weren't so tired in the first place. No hard feelings."

He brightened up, and his smile went nearly from ear to ear. "That's good to hear! Oh, I'm Tasslehoff Burrfoot." He held out his hand. "My friends call me Tas. You can call me Tas if you want. It's the least I could do for having knocked you down like that."

I blinked and shook the hand. "I'm Ives Tarrosage. You know, it's dangerous to be doing things like letting yourself be launched out of catapults… especially when you're so near a huge waterfall like this. If you hadn't have hit me, you might have gone right through over the edge."

"Well, actually… I wasn't near any waterfall!" His face turned thoughtful. "The only water around was this little stream near the road where I found that gnome. But now, it looks like I'm in a_completely different_ place. Maybe his catapult works even better than he thought!" The smile came back, tenfold if possible. "I don't think I've ever been here. It looks _really_ interesting. What's it called?"

"Claripost."

The little creature immediately sat down onto the stone ground and pulled out a wooden case. Out came maps…pages and pages of maps! And some of them were very old, by the looks of them. I drew in close, looking at them myself. I wasn't really interested in cartography, but old papers from far back into history is a delight for someone who is as intrigued by anthropological scholarship as I was. And imagine my shock when I saw that the map that he had was completely unrecognizable to me! "How old is this map?"

He looked up. "Hmm? This one? Oh, this one's from back before the Cataclysm. I guess it's not very useful anymore, but I've used it a few times, and it _has_ helped… when a port town doesn't turn out to be a desert, anyway."

"The Cataclysm? You mean the Gods' Impact?"

"I guess. The time when the gods sent down a fiery mountain and messed everything up because of a cleric. You call it 'Gods' Impact' here?"

"Yeah…"_I never heard of it called the Cataclysm before_. "And it was more than a 'fiery mountain', you know."

"Oh, I know," he responded with a shrug, then turned back to the map.

"Claripost was made by the Impact," I interjected, still looking quite conspicuously over his shoulder. The old dialect was hard to read, one that I was unfamiliar with. Two names stuck out: Ansalon, in big bold letters, and Solace, apparently a town. I couldn't pull up anything, but they _did_ sound familiar…

Before I could study further, he rolled it back up, apparently a little frustrated. "Really? I wonder if I do have a map for it or not… I've never been here before, that's for sure. Not sure if I've ever even _heard_ of it before."

"Are you serious? It's a very popular spot. So many people come here to tour its—" I just caught myself before I started gushing about how beautiful it was, and suddenly reminded myself how I got into a predicament like this in the first place. "I'm very sorry, but my familiar—my cat—has wondered off up here and I've been having trouble finding him."

"I'll help you!" Tasslehoff quickly offered. "I'm really good with familiars. I even pretended to be one before. Say, if you have a familiar, that means you're a mage, right?"

"Yes, I am. You weren't already able to tell?"

"Well, you did seem like one, but I've never seen a mage wear robes like that before. Are you a renegade?"

The unusual question caught me by surprise. "Uh, no. No, I'm an academy mage."

"Oooh, I see. I wasn't aware that different academies had different robes for their students, but I guess that makes sense—"I thought about correcting him and telling him that my academy had no dress code and I wore this robe out of choice, but I let it pass—"Anyway, you have a cat familiar? What's it look like?"

"He's a shorthair black cat, yellow eyes, long and thin, white whiskers and an hourglass-shaped marking on his chest. And he… he talks."

His face lit up. "A talking cat!"

"His name is Raistlin."

"Wow," Tasslehoff blinked and grinned wider. "Raistlin, huh? And he has an hourglass marking? That's pretty precise. You know, I actually knew Raistlin Majere. I was a _personal_ friend of him, and his twin brother Caramon. I wonder what he'd say if he found out mages were naming their familiars after him? Especially cats. I bet if Raistlin were any animal, he'd be a cat. He really acts like one. Or acted, I should probably say. Since he's been dead a while."

I was struck dead into silence for several seconds before I could respond. "…Uhh, what?"

Before my brain could form anything remotely more complex, the flap of large bird wings grabbed my attention. A second later, I found raven claws digging into my scalp as Buzz perched upon my head.

"You damn bird!" I hissed immediately, all but forgetting Burrfoot and the string of strange things he had said. "You know how much I dislike you landing on my head… or how _anyone_ dislikes you landing on their heads. It fucking hurts! I bet the only reason_Quitha_ doesn't complain all the time is because her hair is already red as blood."

Buzz paid no mind and groomed himself a small bit. "Well, I've found you. Boss'll be here soon, Mabon in tow. They've been up all night, worried sick about you, you know."

"I notice you say 'they' instead of 'we'. Did you care at all, Buzz?"

I could feel him shrug (every single movement of his transferred to my skull), but then he answered. "Sure, I do. But I just thought you wanted to camp out up here or something, since you'd brought food and the cat with you."

"Raistlin came of his own accord. Speaking of, I've lost him. He ran off and I couldn't keep track of him in the darkness. Think you could circle the rocks a bit and see if you can find him?"

I felt him shrug again. "I dunno. Maybe after Boss gets here."

Tasslehoff was newly intrigued. "That bird's talking pretty well. Is it another familiar?"

"Yes, the familiar of a friend of mine. The raven's name is Buzz. Buzz, this is Tasslehoff Burrfoot."

I don't know why I bothered trying to introduce them to each other, because Tasslehoff was already jumping up, trying to figure out how to shake hands with a bird, while Buzz was basically acting like Buzz. This (thankfully) lead Buzz to get off of my head, and it prompted the two to get into a conversation about insects the likes of only an intelligent, talking raven and a creature such as Burrfoot could have.

It was enough time to let Quitha and Mabon catch up. "Ives!" I heard Quitha call. "There you are! Oh, gods, we've been looking all over the place for you!"

At this time, I realized how dirty and tired I must have looked, not to mention how cold my skin was—although I seemed to have warmed up from yelling at the two chirping, diminutive creatures that found me first. I forced an irritated sigh and ran a hand through my hair, consciously trying to appear nonchalant about how I might have looked. "You guys act like I could just waltz off and break my neck if you aren't with me twenty-four/seven. You both seem to forget that I am an adult as well." I gave a sort of half-glare at Quitha, "And you better not start about you being older than me. You're a _half-elf_. Between a half-elf and a full human, ten years isn't that big of a difference."

Mabon and Quitha looked at me awkwardly, not finding words quickly enough to respond.

"Hey! You're a half-elf?" Tasslehoff burst into the awkward moment by his own accord and thrust a tiny hand out towards Quitha. "I'm Tasslehoff Burrfoot! One of my best friends is a half-elf. In fact, he goes by Half-Elven. Tanis Half-Elven. You probably heard of him, being one of the Heroes of the Lance and all. And that he married Laurana." As they shook hands, he looked over at Mabon. "And I can't even place what you are! I know most humans aren't that big!"

None of us seemed to have had any time to digest his words before we were forced to interact with this constantly moving creature, so they reacted as I did by staring blankly at him before Mabon finally grinned. "Oh, well, I know my appearance startles a few people. I'm a half-orc."

"Half…what?" Burrfoot looked puzzled, and he quieted down to perhaps the longest pause he'd given since I've met him in this short time. "…Is that anything like an ogre?"

Mabon blinked with wide eyes, by my guess not knowing whether he should feel insulted or not. Tasslehoff had, after all, asked the question quite earnestly. He did honestly seem to not have encountered half-orcs before. Then again, Tasslehoff himself was strange in many ways.

"Hey, wait a minute… Maybe that catapult was really magical! Since I never heard of this place before, and you seem to have interesting things and sorts of people that I've never seen before, and it's not in any of my maps… Maybe I'm on one of the continents to the North! I've never been to them, and that would explain a whole lot…"

I found myself silently agreeing, as, yes, him being a foreigner would explain a deal, until I remembered again… "Oh, damnit… Quitha, Mabon—I've lost Raistlin. I really have no clue where he is. He ran off sometime last night."

"Really?" Quitha responded first. "And you aren't able to contact him?"

"…I'm not advanced enough in my studies to be able to scry on him like that."

"I mean, the empathic link that all mages have with their familiars. Where general emotional context can be transferred? You should be able to at least tell if he's hurt or lost."

I twisted my mouth a little, inwardly cursing myself for not thinking of that myself. But it wasn't like I used it often. For one, it allowed Raistlin to feel what I felt as well, which seemed like a bad idea when I'm already in a constant battle of wits with the feline. Two, I kept hearing the other mages complaining that usually what they got out of the link was that their familiar was always concerned with _animal_ things, which was usually wanting to eat, so it didn't seem terribly useful. Three, it was _just_ emotion that was transferred. No words or messages.

At least, if nothing else, it had a fairly specific range that the empathic link could be felt for any mage (about 1.6 kilometers), so I should be able to confirm him being fairly close, or far away, as the case may be.

I closed my eyes, trying to focus on the link. I found it much harder than usual to focus on it, which I would have normally attributed to my fatigue. It seemed like he was close, and yet far away at the same time. I couldn't put my finger on it.

And then I solidified with the link, and I felt contentment. It was the feeling of breathing slowly, at a comfortable temperature, reclining on an adequate surface, and dreaming dreams that weren't haunting or prophetic or confusing.

I opened my eyes with a bemused chuckle. "This must be what it feels like to be a sleeping cat."

.-.-.

I had decided to leave well enough alone. Even when I went back to the hotel, I was able to keep the empathic link if I wished, so if he was around, he could come back by his own accord. However, I was partially worried, although I didn't vocalize it; it _did_ still feel like he was somehow very far away even as he was close. I found out much later what to attribute that distance to.

Tasslehoff Burrfoot had eventually explained himself as a kender, which, as far as I could figure, was some sort of strange offshoot of halfling that existed especially and totally in his area (since he didn't seem to quite understand what a halfling was, either). But he was delightful in the moments that you didn't want to strangle him. Those amusing moments, for me, were usually when _other_ people wanted to strangle him. He had a razor wit, a funny innocence, and a mischievousness that incorporates it all, like he was eternally that age when a child is much more clever than an adult and mirthfully takes full advantage of it.  
He babbled a lot, sometimes about his friends, sometimes about his own adventures. His own adventures, particularly one involving a ring that made him teleport, seemed to have been crafted over years and years of retelling it to anyone who would listen, and although it was a good story, whether or not it was true… _well_. Maybe it was, once, but I doubt the truth had lived through the adaptation.

He talked a lot about a dwarf named Flint, who was his best friend even though the dwarf would say otherwise if you asked him. Gruff, old fellow, liked to work with his hands, hated boats, complained about anything that could be complained about, and would have found something to complain about if there wasn't. Well, that was actually pretty believable. That was the basic demeanor of every dwarf in Vearth, even including the evil duergar from the Underdark.

But if you expected me to sit through all this, as well as the oncoming cheerfulness of my comrades that loomed like impending destruction over my head, after a not-so-restful-and-not-at-all-warm night _without_ getting myself a cup of coffee, I would call you a fool. I'm not a huge coffee junkie (unlike my friends, who can be very wordy about exactly how they want their coffee and how much sugar, cream, and what flavors they want), but when I need it, I need it. And after last night, I _needed_ it. A _lot_ of it. And it had to be as _black_ as _drow skin_, damnit.

So, those of you who are unlucky enough to know both what caffeine and kender are, you cannot judge me in this, because I _didn't_ know what kender were, and, by the gods, I was _not_ going to let anything keep me from getting my coffee. And, just so you know, I had completely drained three full cups before he even had the chance to sneak a sip.

That aside, it logically comes that the little thief _did_ eventually steal a few gulps of my coffee, and the chatty little guy that was already having trouble staying in one place ended up all over the whole hotel (and the area around it). This meant many angry patrons, many angry hotel staff, and an unknown number of disturbed areas from the ensuing trample through the area.

We chased him for two hours. I, luckily, was getting a horrendous energy boost of my own, and now I needed something to occupy that surge. I did most of the chasing that was laced with hurled insults at Tas. He wasn't at all offended by it, either; he had great fun hurling insults right back at me, acting as if the whole thing was a game. I was a little humbled by his ability to curse at a greater magnitude than my own, and, I had to admit, I was having fun while my own caffeine lasted.

Quitha and Mabon, on the other hand, were running in our wake, apologizing on our behalf for the both of us, and both attempting to coax the caffeinated kender to calm down, or at least stop making a childish ruckus of himself. I don't think it helped that the both of them were honestly enchanted with the little guy (Quitha especially… she, Tas, and Buzz are just the same sort of people). They weren't about to scream after him, like I was, and fully intended on taking the responsibility for him, which I wasn't.

My energy crashed about the same moment that I crashed into a wheeled hamper of dirty laundry and nearly garroted myself with a corset string trying to untangle myself from the mess. When I finally emerged from the overturned pile (accompanied with a list of things that were brought down with the hamper), the others had caught up, and the kender had doubled back. I was greeted to two half-humans gasping for breath, a bird chirping rather impertinently while perched on a shoulder, and Tas, who donned the biggest grin that could ever be painted on such a runty face.

I swallowed gulps of air, free from soiled garments in my face and no longer having to overexert myself. I stood, picked off rogue socks and various small articles that stuck to my robes, and brushed off. Despite all this, the only thing on my mind at this moment was whether I would prefer to bathe first, grab a bite of any leftover breakfast in our room, or if I should just plop myself into bed.

I heard one of the housekeepers yelling something in a dialect I didn't know at us from the end of the hall. Probably just as well that I didn't know it; it was likely not all that different from what I was yelling a minute ago.

"Well, that was… invigorating and all," I began, "but I am suddenly reminded that I hardly got any sleep last night due to Raistlin. So, if you lot don't particularly mind—"

Burrfoot's face fell a little bit, and my two friends looked at each other with sheepish, guilty grins. Then Quitha piped up (somewhat cheerier than I prefer…) that she would gladly show our new friend around and accompany him, which Buzz seemed to think would make for a memorable day. Mabon looked a little iffy on it, being that he's overly sensitive and probably didn't like the idea of getting into more trouble than we already had gotten in.

But he didn't pull away quickly enough. Quitha was already spouting out a list of things to do, with Buzz and Tasslehoff fervently agreeing. He was getting dragged in, and because he valued his friends more than common sense…

I eventually waved and walked away, wishing them good luck with their plans, and telling them that if they see Raistlin, that they should send him to me immediately. After all this nonsense, I could really use a _rational_ discussion with my magical, alien, talking cat.

* * *

I may have to quit with the responding to people individually within the A/U, although the nice little "reply" button doesn't seem that much better of an option. Anyway, Dragonlance isn't the most congruent series seeing as I've read stories that had Orcs in it, but Orcs are not officially in Dragonlance (in fact, it might say in the campaign setting that they don't exist in that world). Guh. Confusing. 


	10. Background

Disclaimer: Chapter one.

It's been a while, hasn't it? The movie even came out (the screenwriter should never be hired for anything again) and more stuff had happened. I've been busy with other fics (obviously), but I managed finally to trudge this back up. Hurray!

* * *

_"Don't change color to match the walls. Look like you belong and the walls will change color to match you." --- Kender Proverb, Legends 1: Time of the Twins._

Ah, hotel beds are glorious!

You wouldn't think this of me if you saw my room, which depicts about three steps above the bare essentials, but I _love_ luxury hotel rooms. They're so thoroughly decorated, there are little utilities and various things for your personal use, the bathrooms are always clean, and they're fully furnished with so many comfortable things. And the beds! Sheets and covers and comforters and pillows, so clean and plush and comfy and warm, all on a big bed with a nice mattress and a spring system that doesn't squeak when you so much as breath on it. I suppose if you were the sort of person like Mabon, who has trouble sleeping in strange beds and brings his own pillow from home, the luxury would be meaningless to you. Doesn't bother me, though. That allowed me to take the hotel pillows from his bed as well.

I decided to wash and grab a bite of the now cold breakfast crumpets before I jumped into my bed and burrowed myself in. I mused silently for a while before I drifted into sleep, very content and feeling, very familiarly, like I did with my empathic link to that cat. I think at some point, in that dreamy, somewhere between states of consciousness mindset, I decided that I was more like him than I thought. It was a passing thought, however, that was only on a string leading to the next dream sequence.

It was twilight before I finally awoke to the feeling of four miniature weights plodding about my bed over the covers before settling in a sitting position. I blinked and squinted up at my damned familiar before I pulled myself up and proceeded to berate him.

"By the planes of torture, where have you been?! You insane feline, I've been worried as sick as an elven widow with a mercenary son! What were you thinking, running off into the night on an island that sits on a waterfall! Oooh, I have half a mind to take you back to that shop for how much trouble you've given me!"

Raistlin ignored me. "Yes, yes. Perhaps, now, you could tell me what the _kender_ is doing here?"

I would have flown into a proper rage if I hadn't just woken up and felt, outside of Raistlin's insubordination, in a particularly pleasant mood. Instead, I merely responded, "You mean Burrfoot? He says he was catapulted here… by an actual catapult. A dwarf made it, and it was apparently magical." I rubbed my eyes some while my mind warmed up enough and let everything click in place.

"Do you have any idea how reckless he is? Especially in a place like this! No, of course you don't know, but we need to take care of this immediately!"

My hand dropped and I stared at him, deadpan with seriousness and the fact that I just woke up. "Why don't you tell me how reckless he is, Majere?"

He shut up, and didn't have a chance in hiding his shock. Those yellow eyes flew wide and his whiskers quivered. "How…!" He even got up and started pacing on the bed, then stopped and looked straight at me with his most oppressive glare. "…_What did Tas tell you?_"

"A lot of things, but most of it went by so quick, I couldn't keep up. But I'm sure that I can have him tell me everything about you that he knows. He's a chatty little bastard, and I believe he said that the two of you were _personal friends_."

Those eyes narrowed more, in unveiled anger, and I knew that I hit the jackpot. He looked like he would slowly burn my skin off with a lighter if he had the chance (and the thumbs) to do it. He was probably having trouble pulling back his burning rage to let the wheels of his mind work unhindered, thus the cat was quiet for a long time. A sudden urge to yell "checkmate" came over me, but I squelched it with a sardonic grin of my own that said it all for me. That's right, you unruly little furball! No more moves for _you_!

"Fine! I'll explain everything—"

"Damn right you will. From the beginning."

"—But don't let that kender know about me, you understand? I can't let anyone from Solace know what's going on here. All of this is difficult enough, and it would complicate things. Besides, I certainly have no wish to have everyone back in Absalon is _laughing_ at me!"

"Prideful grimalkin," I snorted, but I agreed to his terms…if only because it seemed excessively cruel to Raistlin (its true, I do have something like a conscience) to tell someone like Burrfoot these sorts of details. I could just imagine the reaction Tasslehoff would have, and I could _certainly_ imagine my familiar being dead from pure mortification.

He found himself a comfortable and dignified position on the covers after I got out of the bed and started getting dressed. The tale started from the very beginning, going slowly and as matter-of-fact as he could muster, looking in an obscure direction at nothing in particular the entire time. And even though he hadn't gotten far before I was ready to leave and the history had to pause for a little while, his story already seemed nothing less than fantastical.

"Hold that thought," I stopped him after he finished talking about his mother's death (I finished getting dressed before that, but he seemed rather sensitive concerning the subject of his mother, so I allowed him to finish that far). "We'll need to go out and meet the others. I'll warn you if you haven't already figured it out; Burrfoot knows your name and that you talk, but he doesn't know that it's you unless you let it slip while I was asleep."

He made a grunt. "That makes things troublesome."

"How troublesome? Was your voice the same before you turned into a cat?"

"Close enough to raise questions. And if those two friends of yours are about, then I wont be able to disguise it without raising suspicion."

"Burrfoot doesn't strike me as hard to fool, and Quitha and Mabon are naïve enough. You could disguise your voice and claim you have a cold from being out in the cold and wet so long—"

"Colds don't work that way!"

"—Or you could simply say that your voice is how you obtained your name. Just think up something. You're a smart grimalkin. I'm sure deception is one of your most honed skills."

As it turned out, he didn't have to; Tasslehoff had wondered off at some point and my friends had lost track of him. Now having a deeper understanding of what a kender was (Raistlin wasted no time in explaining _that_ to me, and I believed every word because of the chase earlier), I was a little concerned about what sort of repercussions his presence in a world that he didn't belong in could occur. Especially since I saw what happens when caffeine is added to his system, something that Raistlin admitted he had not seen himself while on Krynn.

Well… at least he isn't _my_ problem any more.

Mabon and Quitha were already tired from the day that they spent with the kender, Mabon especially. Buzz chirped away, as energetic as ever, so I wasn't terribly worried about them. Actually, I rather preferred it to the chipper attitude they had before I went to bed. Even in their muted states I was able to convince them to go out and do things with Raistlin and I. I chose to go to a nice restaurant since I felt ravenous.

It was a nice meal, and no one was even acting up. At some point, I was even able to whisper to Raistlin to ask him where he'd been… since I didn't manage for him to explain that before.

He gave a low growl and responded, tone low, "I went to Krynn momentarily… following the smell of—" He paused for a while. "—of spiced potatoes. I don't know where I ended up; it was not Solace like I expected. But it was Krynn. I recognized the moons. I don't know how I came back, precisely."

I nodded and decided to leave it at that for now. So there seemed to have been some sort of gate or portal in Claripost to Krynn… either that or all those rumors about mist making natural portals between planes of existence was true. I didn't exactly have enough information to go on to discern exactly what happened, so I didn't know. But I _did_ know that I wanted to be able to discern it, that I was intensely curious (as a cat maybe) about this whole situation.

Hell, we're going to be in Claripost for a few days, right? And I like it here well enough. Why not?

.-.-.-.

When the others retired to bed, I was able to have Raistlin continue his history. Meanwhile, I was studying in Claripost's public library, mostly through newpaper microfilm and such, about any strange happenings in the vacation spot. I was greeted with a wealth of interesting—and dubious—information. There were books and pamphlets and flyers detailing ghost story after ghost story, and with just a little comparison between sources, I could tell how different the same story can be told depending on who's telling it. Strange monsters, ghosts, ghouls and other random undead, astral plane creatures… the list goes on.

It was, admittedly, hard to divide my concentration between research and Raistlin. Several times I've had to ask him to repeat himself, and just as many times I've lost my place in what I was reading and had to start all over again. It was a little hard to get anything done, but I wasn't really willing to give up one in favor of the other at the moment.

Raistlin stopped his account of his Test in the Tower of High Sorcery abruptly while I was flipping through pages. "Wait! What was that picture just now? Go back!"

I frowned since I was flipping through a paper to get to the continuation of an article from the front page, but I flipped back since he was probably going to complain if I didn't. A picture of Doctor Verobsance, face painted with her favorite make-up, popped up on the display among some other people in wizard robes and Claripost in the background, not looking a day younger than she did when I turned my project in to her for the semester. My eyes grew wide with disbelief.

The newspaper was dated sixty years ago.

"By the gods…" I gasped and began reading the article accompanying it. She was with a group of wizards that were researching the mists of Claripost, and in fact she was leading the research team. The goal of the research was, apparently, to discern if certain entities in other planes—particularly spirits of the dead and even certain gods—could be contacted more easily through the use of the mists. I shook my head in shock.

"Nothing strange about her age, you'd said." I heard a smirk in Raistlin's voice.

"I don't understand…" I looked over the picture, trying to discern if maybe it was just one of her older relatives. No, she looked exactly like her. Every wrinkle and mark on her face was exactly the same. "This can't be… She's human!"

"Maybe she is, and maybe she isn't. But if she _isn't_ human, Ives, then how isn't she hasn't been aging?"

"There are ways, I suppose. But most ways of humans continuing their ages are…" I paused. "Maybe she's had training as a druid or something similar. I've heard that after a certain point, their merging with nature makes them eternally young."

"Perhaps she is a druid, but I've known people who draw their powers from the wild, and she does not have the same sort of magical pressure as they do. Their magic is more divine and are affected by that which surrounds them. She, on the other hand, affects the Weave around herself. If she had done studies in druidic magic, it was abandoned long ago."

I went silent, staring at the old picture of Verobsance and feeling absolutely disturbed to my core. Sure, I might have feared Verobsance somewhat, but so did every other student in the university. When Raistlin had first raised questions concerning her, I just thought the air she gave off made him a little paranoid. Never had I imagined that there would ever be anything to it!

As the hours went on, I changed the trajectory of my search to the research that Verobsance had done in Claripost sixty years ago. The search didn't take me far; apparently, the team ended their search after a year of study due to budget problems. This frustrated me just enough to be tired of the library and announce that we were leaving. Raistlin didn't complain; I think he was tired of getting disparaging looks from the librarian while he recounted his past to me.

We spent the rest of the night seeing the sites until all the businesses closed, then I went ahead and went back to the hotel took a nap. The next several days in Claripost was spent similarly, bouncing between having fun with my friends, studying in the library, and doing personal investigations around Claripost. Raistlin seemed to have actually enjoyed it, even though he would never admit it (he would never admit that I was near running him ragged by being so active, either). However, I don't think I was really getting that much closer to an answer, and when it came time for us to leave, I was seriously considering staying behind to continue my search for the rest of the break.

Buzz convinced me out of the notion of staying, saying that I didn't have the money for it. Damn Venetian pigeon just had to be _right_, didn't he?

The train ride back was much calmer than the one getting there, if only because no one mentioned my gnomish friends this time around, and I wasn't in a flying rage, threatening bodily harm upon the others. Hell, Raistlin even seemed to be in a genuinely good mood, only darkened by the fact that he might have been just as disappointed in our having to leave as I was.

Back at the university, however, I went back into a flying rage. I had just bought food the night before we left, and some of it had spoiled during our vacation. _Arg!_

* * *

Yeah, I know it's been a year (and I also know this is a little short). But I (still) don't have my DL books with me save for one, and school was very intrusive… not to mention a menagerie of other things. On the other hand, there might be more updates since I'm doing a chapter of something on ff-net a week (every Friday).


End file.
